


A Perfect World

by awkwardeye



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, POV Third Person, Sexual Content, Suicide, Toxic Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 02:59:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5895514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardeye/pseuds/awkwardeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'll kill you if you fall in love with me."</p><p> </p><p>As the age of repression and subsequent order dominates society, what were once casual indulgences become crimes worthy of persecution and prosecution. An underground rebellion threatens the order of society with its seemingly mindless entropy. Wrapped in the entropy of rebellion, Kylo submerges himself in the culture where he learns that some secrets are better left unspoken. With the lines blurring between right and wrong, love and hate become two discernable sensations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

One might've called it organized chaos should they have stumbled upon the scene which played out beneath the city. Organized, for the strictly followed secrecy policy. Chaos, for the reasoning behind such a strict secrecy policy.

Bodies upon bodies lined the many rows of the theatre, eerily silent and still. Each person stood a small distance from the other, never once brushing an arm or hip despite their suffocating proximity. Shrouded in darkness and awarded anonymity by their masks, they all watched the barbaric scene before them unfold with as little reaction as one watching a rather dull news segment.

The melody of flesh pounding flesh reverberated harshly in the spectators’ ears, a pleasant hum to the ears of the towering man as his fists and feet flew. A spectacular scene to demonstrate the raw, virgin human thirst for blood. Beneath his mask, he bared his teeth and growled, a low noise filled with aggression. “You’re weak,” he spat, sneering down at the man sprawled across the floor.

“I’d rather be weak than a monster,” coughed the man. A fatal err on his part, throwing such a taunting phrase at the merciless man standing above him, nearly unscathed from their match. He knew, from the slight shift in demeanor as he parted his lips, that no error, no slip, could prove itself more fatal than one uttered beneath the fists of the enemy. Still, it was in his nature to act in defiance when faced with inevitable defeat.

The loud crunching screech of bone splitting beneath the weight of a heavy foot assaulted the ears of all present, sending shivers down spines and filling the viewers with a sadistic anticipation. His skin, pulled taut and white, stretched wondrously. Beneath it, his spine shattered in a magnificent show hidden to the eye and similar to a white, splintering tree. The man's jaw hung open, a horrible keening noise that grated on the nerves spilled from his torn lips, spilling blood to match, before settling into a string of howls and incoherent whimpers. His eyes bulged, as if pleading to be released and free to roll from his face and to the rough floor.

“Once more, Kylo Ren has defeated his opponent. A round of applause.” The man who spoke radiated monotony. His dusty suit hung from his thin form, never tailored to his measurements. His carefully slicked back few remaining strands of gray hair stuck out above his plain mask. The theatre filled with the booming roar of forced praise for the ever infamous Ren as he claimed a rather subdued victory.

Lacking the usual bloodthirsty approach, Kylo hadn’t shone brightly throughout the fight. Shame, it was usually the ones lacking weapons that proved to be the most barbaric, especially for Kylo. Kylo who once ripped a man’s throat with his bare hands, a man unperturbed by the notion of reaching into a person and holding their heart. Feared by many, even distracted he put on a decent show.

Kylo Ren was not himself. His thoughts had long since escaped him and in his head played neverending white noise. Despondence slowed his movements and weighed down his limbs like the weight of the sea pressing in around him as he tried fruitlessly to swim. To be free of emotion and the notion of replaying one insignificant moment in his head as if it was the only important moment of his existence and every tiny detail to it meant something, he hoped.

What left the untouchable Kylo Ren in such a state?


	2. An Uneventful Evening

“Father hasn’t returned, I take it?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Kali nodded, casting her eyes down as she unbuttoned her blouse. Strands of hair fell from their carefully crafted style and clung to her skin, wet with sweat. As she lifted her arms to fan herself with the letters in her hand, the faint scent of perspiration mixed with her perfume caught Kylo’s attention.

“Was there anything for me?” he asked, slouching in his seat. Watching Kali move through his eyelashes, the heat pervaded his clothes, making him uncomfortably aware of the stiff fabric against his hot skin. His eyes followed the slight curve of her clavicle all the way to the its sudden dip and down, down, down to where a single bead of sweat rolled past the boundary of her shirt and into the valley between her breasts, kept from his sight.

Kali tossed the letters at the man with a sigh. “I saw you today,” she said. Sliding into a chair opposite the man, she slouched over the table and pressed her palms flat against the surface. “Discussing more ways to catch rebels?”

Kylo swallowed thickly and nodded (though he hadn’t quite caught what she said), dragging his eyes away from the copious amount of rosy skin visible in her current position. Pressing his lips into a hard line, her adjusted his trousers and snapped, “Fix yourself in the presence of a man!” It was immoral for a woman to be so… so… he couldn’t find the word to describe Kali’s behavior.

“You’re hardly a man, though, Mr. Ren.” She waved her hand dismissively and stood. “Anyway, I’ll be returning late tonight, but you’ll cover for me, won’t you?”

Kylo stood abruptly, towering over the young woman.

Her heart leapt into her throat beneath his gaze and she found herself clutching the back of her seat tightly enough to pale the skin around her knuckles. Her heart knocked impatiently against her ribs, the sound of blood rushing through her body flooded her red ears, and she stepped back on impulse. Those eyes of his, glinting with everything evil under the sun, peeled away at her courage until she shrank away.

“I assure you that I am as much a man as any,” he hissed.

“A man, not a beast. I’m sure you can control yourself at the sight of my neck!” Kali met Kylo’s gaze evenly, though her eyes shone with fear and his with malice. Try as she may, she couldn’t force irritation from fear and pulled her gaze down first, submitting to Kylo. She didn’t lift her eyes until she heard his footsteps, thundering and heavy, retreat to his bedroom.

“Funny how you, a first class repressor, can’t resist a little bit of skin… _hypocrite_!” But even as the words left her lips, she knew they meant nothing because he hadn’t heard them and never would. She grabbed the stack of letters and flipped through them for any addressed to her or her father, knowing there wouldn’t be any.

A loud crash followed by the jarring slams of furniture being hurled about the room and glass breaking assaulted Kali’s ears just as she began to relax. She slammed the letters onto the table with an irritated groan and stomped out of the kitchen. A sudden silence paused her movements and she hesitated a step away from the bathroom door. Her eyes caught the movement of Kylo’s doorknob as it swiveled and she dashed into the bathroom without another thought, heart pounding loudly against her ribs.

 

* * *

 

Kali stared absently out of the window, a cigarette burning between her fingers, contemplating whether or not she should bring up the events of the day to her father. Father, as much as she loved him and he loved her, she knew would never take her side regarding the nature of Mr. Ren. She flicked the cigarette, depositing another pile of ash on the pristine white carpet, and nodded her head. “Well,” she began. “How was your day, Father?”

The older man glanced up at his daughter over the top of his newspaper with a grunt as if forming a complete sentence would be an effort wasted on her. In fact, it felt juvenile for her to ask of his day when she almost certainly already knew every detail of it. He decided to turn the focus onto her. “How was class?”

“The usual repetition,” she replied.

Father grinned, pleased to know that sending his daughter to school for her degree was a waste in all aspects outside of legality. “There was an interesting case today,” he mused, dropping his paper onto his desk and reclining in his seat.

Kali dragged her eyes away from the window and prompted her father to continue with a polite smile.

“A child,” he continued, “Burned nearly to the bone in places. No real damage to his face beside the eyes, you know how they are… He was one of those rebel bastards, a product of scum, but his grandparents paid nicely and I don’t refuse business.”

The air grew heavy and Kali turned her eyes back to the window, succumbing to the sensation of cold fingers reaching into her chest and settling over her heart. It was a familiar feeling, one that plagued her nights when she couldn’t rid her mind of death, her mother, or Kylo. A crushing hopelessness tinged by fear that overpowered her easily. She never could stomach the thought of embalming a child, though she knew it to be a common occurrence in her world.

“Dealing with children… doesn’t it bother you, Father?”

“Normal children, yes. Rebel children, good riddance.” He let out a heavy sigh, his eyes finally noticing the cigarette between his daughter’s fingers. “It’s unbecoming of a lady to smoke. The liberals may say it’s fine, but I will not have my daughter parading about in such a way, especially not when Kylo could walk in at any moment.” His eyes shone at the mention of the odd young man he’d taken in years before. “He’s a good man, that Ren.”

Kali hesitated, the words catching in her throat. Yearning to tell her father the truth of Kylo, but afraid of either of the men’s reaction, she thought herself into complacence. “Yes, he is,” she whispered. But the hollow tone of her voice contradicted her words.


	3. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo wants to control Kali

In his dreams, she was completely at his mercy and wholly enamored by him.

Their bodies, pressed flush against each other, created an unbearable heat. The contact of her skin against his, slick with sweat and burning with desire, left his head hollow and devoid of all thoughts save for the repeated need to bury himself within the paradise between her legs that had beckoned him since she’d entered that fragile stage between pubescence and womanhood.

The murmur of conversation roused him slowly from sleep and into a slight trance. He woke with his cheek pressed against the floor where he’d collapsed after his fit. His clothing stuck to his skin, tinged red and burning. The fabric of his trousers pulled uncomfortably tight in his state of arousal. Such combined with the overall sensation of uncleanliness vaulted him to his feet and he stumbled out of his chamber and into the corridor.

The floorboards creaked beneath Kylo’s feet loudly, momentarily pausing the conversation in the study.

“Join us, Kylo,” came the stern voice of Father.

“No! He-,” Kali protested, dropping her voice suddenly. The rest of her words melted into a soft murmur of dissonance. If there was reason for Kylo’s ability to withstand Kali it was her habit of quieting her own protest before she began it. Out of fear, out of respect, for whatever reason she proved herself to be more submissive than she painted herself in her mind.

Kylo decided to let Kali’s small protest answer for him as he slipped into the bathroom with a scowl. The bathroom smelled faintly of Kali, of her soap and shampoo and perfume. Though the floor was dry, the mat beside the tub was damp where she’d stood. A layer of mist covered the mirror, a single streak swiped clean for her to look at herself. Modest, the streak stood exactly at the height of her face.

Kylo exhaled slowly, vaguely bothered by the motion of his thoughts as they attempted to follow the path of events which made up Kali’s schedule. He had no reason to contemplate such trivial things when more pressing matters waited to be unraveled by his mind.

He lived above the heart of moral corruption. Below his feet, below the streets he walked everyday, a city vagabonds thrived. Sex, alcohol, drugs, and violence thrived beneath him and he had no way of untangling the web of corruption and finding the exact catalyst of every illicit detail known to him as the Resistance. Everyday, the city around him pulsed with crime on either side as if caught in a sempiternal state of disarray awaiting order.

If there was one thing he wanted, it was absolute control over the system. To know exactly what went on and where it went on, to pick at the tiniest details. The idea brought a warmth to his limbs that concepts as foreign as love and altruism alluded to in popular text. Just thinking of straightening out the entropy of anarchy sent thrills up his spine in electric waves.

_  
_

* * *

_She smells of everything I hate._

It was the first thought to filter through his mind upon her late arrival. She moved painstakingly slowly, her fingers shaking slightly as she removed her jacket. The light article slid down around her arms, pooling at her elbows when she paused, suddenly aware of another’s presence. Quickly, she slipped the jacket back over her shoulders and stepped out of her heels, her eyes never leaving the floor. “I said I’d be late,” she murmured.

“Your father-!”

“Why do you do it?” she hissed. The shadow of the doorway hid her expression, one of absolute contempt. Even as she fought to control herself, her reactions, her own helplessness and lack of control drove her to irrationality and brutal honesty. “You parade around here like you _belong_ , but you don’t. You’re just some freak-!” The words caught in her throat and she spun around to face Kylo without bringing her eyes to his face.

Within her, she found herself incapable of shaking the sensation of being suffocated. Her blood burned, her body shook, her eyes gleamed. The adrenaline pumping through her body left her manic. She was switching from one life and into another as one might change clothes and she felt the fabric hadn’t yet quite settled correctly around her shoulders. But when it did, it was amazingly restrictive, so tight she felt her ribs being pushed together and her collar dig into her skin. And then she was returning to Kali, sweet and quiet and obedient Kali, and she withered beneath Kylo’s gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Kali whispered. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what came over me.”

Kylo stepped closer to Kali, sensing something amiss. She looked familiar, slightly unkempt and afraid with flushed cheeks and tired eyes behind drooping lids. However, on her lips lingered the faint odor of alcohol, cheap wines, and something much more sinful that he refused to acknowledge. On her skin, the mixing smells of sweat and another’s cologne rested proudly. In her hair, the tracks of fingers lingered that had run themselves through her thick locks, the hair he so desperately longed to tangle his own fingers in and pull whenever she seemed about to argue. “Where did you go?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you,” she replied. She clutched her jacket tightly around her form and squirmed like a child nearly caught. Kali smiled apologetically and maneuvered her way around the towering male, giving him full access to the door which he’d been on his way to open when she slipped in like some sort of criminal.

The night (early morning rather) called to him, ready to fill his mind with thoughts of her and her whereabouts. Normally, he wouldn’t allow himself to be sucked into the storm of confusion, but he felt that he owned Kali to an extent and such irrelevant information  should be made available to him without his asking and should most definitely not be denied upon questioning.

In his mind, it wasn’t like Kali to withhold information. When he asked a question, she responded honestly and without any prying or scolding on his part and she didn’t openly disrespect him. Thinking of her response made him think about her, about her scent and his own conclusion regarding what she’d been up to and what she was trying to hide. It was the thoughts of her having the things he’d contemplated doing to her done to her by another person when he _owned_ her that drove him into a fit.

In his frenzy, he could only think of Kali and his own childish jealousy. It only fueled him on more, thinking of her because the implication of being interested in her sickened him beyond doubt because to think of another person was to open his own armor and beg to be struck down. He couldn’t allow her into his head, let alone his bed, but an intrinsic desire for both drove him to rage and he simply couldn’t control it. If he couldn’t control himself, how could he control her and if he couldn’t control her how could he control the world?


	4. Catalyst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more to fear than Kylo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some probably triggering shit to come

For Kali, there wasn’t a silence quite as unnerving and yet comfortable as one brought by the company of death. For as long she could remember, she’d never felt so at peace as she did when embalming. Of course, there were multiple factors playing into this happening, but she comforted herself by blaming the majority of her unrest on Kylo’s presence. For as long as she could remember, he’d been around as constant and overwhelming as time. This simple fact bothered her.

 _Kylo_. When she thought of him, her blood cooled and her limbs stiffened as she remembered the feeling of his eyes on her, devouring her as if she was some sort of sweet. The gleam in those eyes, a mark of determination, seemed to brand her as his since she’d bypassed the innocent mold of childhood. With the loss of a flat chest and angular, awkward limbs came the curve of a body men wished to lay their hands against, and Kylo was a man by default.

Kali stared down at the corpse before her, her mind blank. He might have been sleeping. Only the fluid in his veins wasn’t blood and his chest didn’t rise and fall with the rhythm of breath and his heart lay still in his chest. Small incisions decorated his body, carefully stitched back together to never heal. Beneath his rubbery skin, his organs had lost their crimson sheen -Kali had seen them herself- and rested uselessly within him. With a slight shiver, she pulled the sheet carefully folded at his feet over his body.

For a moment, her shoulders slumped and she breathed evenly, relishing in the silence. The feeling of being the only person alive filled her with a euphoric thrill. If she was alone, if she existed solely, then the pain ceased with the disappearance of expectation. No overbearing father, no mortuary school, no schism between the good and evil, no hovering Kylo, and _no more fear_. Even the freedom of her nights was no match to the silence of her practice.

A loud buzz broke her reverie, a jarring slam in the still silence. “I recall planning to finish where we left off last night,” a cool voice sighed. She could imagine the lips from which the words came pulling back into a pleased sneer, the same sneer she’d encountered only hours before. If there was ever a reason to beg for mercy, the words were it.

Kali blinked quickly, biting her lip. She cast her eyes to the ceiling as her nails dug into her palms, splitting the scabs and bringing beads of blood to the lips of each crescent shaped cut. Her throat constricted tightly. _I have to do this. I have to. There’s no way out._ Her stomach clenched suddenly and she felt the burning warmth of bile rise up her throat. The sting of threatening tears forced her to squeeze her eyes shut with a choked sigh.

Without a word, she pulled off her gloves and placed them carefully on the counter behind her. Moving at an agonizingly slow pace, she stumbled over to the door and wrenched it open. The corridor was still around her as if ignorant to her demise. For a moment, she wished someone - _anyone_ \- would appear, claiming to need her at the moment.

The walk to his office seemed to take hours, but she knew he’d send someone if it took too long. Her breath came out in tortured pants, too slow and far apart. The blood drained from her face, leaving her visage pale. Her limbs felt too heavy, her feet as heavy as stones, and she longed to disappear. But she knew her place, her duties, and the sickening reality of her situation. People like her, people with heavy secrets, didn’t get to disobey direct orders, especially not the ones from people who knew her secrets.

He was standing at his door when she reached it. His pale eyes traveled over her figure, taking note of the fact that she hadn’t changed out of her work clothing. The smell of embalming fluid assaulted his senses and he drew his lips into a tight line of irritation at her weak attempt to ward him off. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and tightened his grip until she winced. Yanking her into his office, he pulled her close to his form and hissed, “It’s going to take more than this to keep my hands off of you.”

Kali shook her head and hissed, “You’re sick.” She averted her gaze, her eyes stinging, and clenched her jaw.

“I’m sick of that mouth of yours, that’s what I am,” he snapped. He reached around her, trailing his fingers up her spine, and pulled the cap from her head, freeing her hair. “I should tell that wretched brat about you, tell him about your whoring,” he breathed. He closed the door and locked it before slamming her against it. He placed one hand on her chin, forcing her to look at him, as he ran the other down her torso. “He might murder you if he knew.”

Kali stood completely still, slumping against the door as she felt her clothing fall around her to the floor. “I’ll tell him about you,” she choked out. “I’ll tell him. He’ll kill _you_ , Hux.” But her words were empty and she knew it. _No one will believe me, not if he tells them everything._ Something within her shut down, as quickly as a flipped switch, and her thoughts and senses drained from her as she stared blankly at the man before her. _There’s nothing I can do_.

 

* * *

 

X.

It was the name she gave when anyone asked. As far as they knew, it was the only name she had. Monosyllabic, it clung perfectly to parted lips caught in the throes of pleasure. Only a letter, it granted a level of anonymity along with the mask she wore, a black number, the kind one might see at a masquerade, crafted specifically for her face.

X.

Every movement suggested something sensual, sinful, sinister. Generous amounts of skin graced the eyes of customers, as anonymous as her. Her body twisted beautifully, muscles pulling and flexing beneath her skin. She stood with her back to the crowd, her face turned toward stage right. A single light shone down on her, bathing her skin in a translucent glow. She turned slowly and walked forward, her heels clicking loudly in the near silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she purred. Her arms rose in a grand swoop as if she was unfurling her wings, and two men -as scantily clad as she- approached her from either side of the stage. Their footsteps echoed ominously in the silence and their eyes burned, the only visible features of their respective visages. They stopped abruptly beside her. She parted her lips and one placed a cigarette between them. The other lit a match and raised it to her cigarette, momentarily illuminating her crimson lips before the flame extinguished itself.

Her eyes rested heavily on the man as he lit her cigarette and she smiled as if she knew something he didn’t. The simple gesture made him quake where he stood and pray to every god he knew of that she wouldn’t choose him for anything other than her evening retreat. Without removing her eyes from him, she addressed the crowd, “We have quite the show planned for tonight.” Tendrils of smoke escaped her nostrils and she tilted her head back. “A fight,” she said. “ _To the death_ ,” she howled, throwing up her arms.

X grabbed the chin of the quaking man and cocked her head to the side, speaking only loud enough for him to hear her. “Why are you so afraid? Do you really think I have the power to throw you into the ring?” She pressed a kiss to his lips, this man whom she knew no better than the majority of the crowd. The warmth of her mouth against his loosened his limbs until she pulled away and she ran a finger over her lips and very deliberately drew a red x over his heart. “No, I’m simply a messenger.”

The Resistance, or, at least its most radical quarters, proved to be the perfect place for a person like X, someone who enjoyed order as much as they enjoyed chaos. Always watching, never more than a piece in the game, she spent her nights either introducing the newest victims (traitors, as most referred to them as) and heroes or entertaining the lonely souls who graced the illegal clubs looking for something pretty to grope.

X grinned as she exited the stage along with the man who’d given her the cigarette. Tossing her hair and laughing, she threw an arm around his broad shoulders as an ear splitting scream penetrated the air.

“Isn’t it cruel, X, sending him out there like that?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think it’s _cruel_ per se,” she hummed. Her lips puckered in an innocent pout and she furrowed her brows behind her mask. When she spoke again, her voice dripped with a bitter sweetness. “Isn’t it cruel, how he _betrayed_ us all for power? You saw the video, he was ready to conform without any warning!” Her voice lowered. “He would have sold us out, now isn’t that cruel?” she sang.

 

* * *

 

X stood before her mirror. The fingers of her right hand splayed across her cheek, visible without her mask and still red from being pressed against a desk for a mind splitting sum of minutes earlier the same day. She hadn’t taken any customers the entire night because the place of meeting between her hips still screamed from its abuse and she feared that the makeup she’d carefully applied over the places where fingertips had bruised her skin might dissipate over the course of the night.

She glared at her reflection, uncomfortably aware of what lay beneath her clothing. She replayed the events of her last night over and over again. She always caught herself just before the moment that godforsaken man slipped off her mask and threatened her because, she hoped, if she could erase it from her memory or reduce it to a dream then she could shake the stiffness from her limbs and grow comfortable in her role again.

But she couldn’t because that man forced her roles to cross over. Who was she? In his presence she couldn’t seem to decide if she was the dominant or submissive until he forced her into her role of submission by twisting his fingers into her hair and promising to protect her secret. As long she obeyed, as long as she listened, that was. Her mind clouded over as she wondered for how much longer she would have to endure it. She hoped to be put out of her own misery or to find an escape.

X slipped her jacket over her arm and slipped her mask on once more. On her way out of the establishment with its many blinking lights and loud music, bodies broke free of crowds and human chains to bid her goodnight. When she reached the entrance, finding a cab already waiting for her, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness swept over her form, so strong her knees nearly gave out beneath her.

 _I have the power to send a man to his death, but not the power to keep a man off of me!_ Her lips trembled at the thought and she clenched her fists tightly as tears threatened to spill. _I hate him._ It would be nothing for her to mention his name and send him to the ring, nothing to watch him die before her eyes. But would it bring satisfaction, watching a man superior to her cease to exist? It wouldn’t take away or lessen the pain of his actions, but would it satisfy her?

“The usual,” she mumbled, slipping into the taxi.

Around her, the city blurred into a wall of buildings and lights and festive music. It was a surprise the First Order hadn’t yet stumbled upon or acknowledged it, considering how open it was and teeming with rebels, too. The quarter would have been a valuable win or loss for either side if they engaged each other, which would inevitably occur. The main difference between rebel territory and everything else was the method of order. It was in the way buildings lined streets, the varying roles and statuses of the people, and the celebrations. Rebel territory was a mess of organized chaos. Outwardly organized, chaotic within. She knew it. She’d grown up traveling between the two.

X never entered First Order territory in any way that might connect her to the rebellion. She abandoned her mask just before entering the city, shoving the thing into her purse to hide among her makeup and spare change. She never had the taxi drive her into the city, preferring to find her way home through a series of dark alleyways where she passed the occasional drunk, vagabond. Her eyes always faced forward and she didn’t stop walking or slow down until she stood outside of her apartment.

In the elevator, she attempted to calm herself and switch personas. However, sensitive and completely alone for a moment, all of her pent up sorrow escaped her in the form of tears. Her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs. She forced herself to face away from the cameras to ensure her tears weren’t caught, too aware of the consequences if they were. There was a reason the repressed hardly knew chaos outside of Kylo Ren and she preferred to stay away from it.


	5. Possession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are changing in the Felian-Ren household.

Kali and Kylo sat on opposite sides of the library, each painfully aware of the other’s existence. She reclined in her chair, sinking into the plush cushioning, with her legs dangling from one arm and her side resting against the other as she flipped through the pages of a book detailing the newest methods of psych evaluations introduced by First Order supporters. He curled over his own book, thrown open to a passage which described the morality of sexual desire. As if on cue, they glanced at each other as if making sure they were still there.

Kali’s father sat at his desk, situated at the far end of the vast room. From his seat, he could see nearly every inch of the aisles between the four rows of shelves which stopped just short of the ceiling. He possessed a clear view of the awkward adults on either side of him, each avoiding the comfort of the couch standing between them (though they both appeared to be in various stages of discomfort at any given moment). Before him, lay several stacks of freshly printed sheets of meticulously tabulated information regarding his trade. Business was at an all time high, but he had been refusing more clients.

“Kali,” murmured Father.

“Yes,” she hummed, without looking up from her page.

“Take your leave.”

The young woman’s head snapped up as she swallowed the noise of her bruised dignity. _Oh, I’ll take my leave, alright!_ With a dramatic sigh, she dragged herself to her feet and tossed the book under her arm as she tossed her hair over her shoulder (clumsily). As she flounced from the room, she thought to herself that she might like to toss her book at her father for belittling her in front of that godforsaken Ren. The last thing she needed was another reason for him to look down on her. _I already have enough of that when he stands beside me_ , she thought.

“Kylo,” Father began. He slumped in his seat, hiking up the legs of his trousers a bit. His elbow rested on the smooth leather arm of his chair, his chin caught between his thumb and index finger. The wrinkles lining his face appeared to deepen, folding along the corners of his mouth as her frowned. His eyes, dark, calculating orbs, bore into Kylo as if measuring him up. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Kali?” Kylo asked, raising an eyebrow. He tossed his book aside and rested his elbows on his thighs, clasping his hands as he leaned forward to consider. When he thought about Kali, she didn’t seem beautiful or ugly. She wasn’t plain, or gorgeous, she simply _was_. Tantalizing at moments, irritating at others, he rarely found himself preoccupied by her face. No, his eyes mostly drifted to her neck, her decolletage, the smooth skin of her shoulders, her legs, but his eyes very rarely caught her face with the exception of her eyes. Her eyes, he could drown in if he wanted to.

“Kali is,” Kylo said. He sifted through his mind for the right phrase or word. Her lips were wide, almost too wide when she smiled (or at least they were the last time he saw her smile), not to mention two of her bottom teeth were slightly crooked. Perhaps her face was slightly too long, too, and her eyes a bit too sad all the time. Still, she didn’t fall out of the conventional bounds of beauty. “She is an attractive woman,” he admitted.

“Not very much like her mother…” Father seemed about to elaborate, but thought better and cleared his throat instead. “You see, Kylo, I’ve been considering this for a while now. I want Kali to be with a promising young man, someone who can continue the business with her.”

“An embalmer?” Kylo mused, knowing that he was less than qualified for the job, but more than qualified to pluck Kali from her position as the mortician’s daughter and place her behind him as his wife.

“No, not exactly. I want her to be with someone who has power and, well, I’ve noticed that Hux has been mentioning her often lately,” he paused for effect. “He’s doing well, isn’t he?” He watched Kylo’s reaction, a burst of pride feeding his ego when he noticed the young man’s defensive change in demeanor. “Time is running out, Kylo, very quickly, and you’ve never been one to wait around.”

“I don’t know what you’re implying,” Kylo spat.

“I’m sure you do.” Father stood slowly, straightening his suit. He sighed and allowed his eyes to roam the expanse of his desk as if searching for something. Pushing an envelope toward the edge, he sighed and glanced up at the young man still seated away from him. “Ownership only transfers easily on paper, Mr. Ren.” With that, he turned and made his

Kylo was at his desk and tearing open the envelope before the door closed.

 

* * *

 

“Young women shouldn’t be seen smoking.”

Kali turned to find Kylo stepping onto the balcony with a cigarette between his fingers. Instinctively, she stepped away from him and he stepped forward to close the distance. The cigarette dangling from her lips was plucked from her lips and claimed as his without any verbal warning.

“Says who?” she muttered, snatching the cigarette. It was a bold move, one which she realized as rude and possibly dangerous even in her foul mood, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Outside, she appeared unfazed, but within the corridors of her mind chaos thrived. _He’ll murder me right here!_ A blanket of despondence soothed her unease to an extent, but the numb sensation choked her for she knew that her lack of reaction would prove fatal.

Kylo stared at her for a moment, somewhat aroused by her show of defiance. Irritation settled around him and he considered putting the damn thing out on her to keep her from smoking, but the urge to toy with her while she was so out of character suppressed the desire to inflict physical harm. He smirked and placed his own cigarette between his lips, waving Kali closer to him. Tipping her chin up, he bent forward to light his cigarette, an oddly affectionate action that caused Kali to flinch at the onslaught of memories it brought.

Her hand found its way to his chest for a brief moment, pushing him away. “D-don’t!” she hissed, her vision blurring momentarily. “Please, don’t do that,” she murmured, squeezing her eyes shut as she grabbed her own cigarette from her mouth. Her cheeks burned and her breath escaped in harsh pants. She tossed the cigarette away and stumbled away from Kylo, clutching her head with one hand and unbuttoning her blouse with the other only to hold the fabric together as she realized whose presence she was in.

Kylo was too surprised by her reaction to his touch to surrender to his anger fully. His cigarette fell to the floor in his confusion and he straightened his back, glaring at the woman before him. “I’ll do anything I _want_ to do to you or anyone else,” he snapped, attempting to regain dominance. His eyes gleamed dangerously as he straightened his tie. And then he remembered that she was entirely clueless to her fate as of yet, without even the slightest inkling that he could easily take her where they stood and ruin her prospects of a future with anyone other than himself. To have so much control over a woman finally emerging from her own submission excited him far too much.

“You’re just like him,” Kali retorted. _Cold, heartless, a monster with no sense of morality_.

“You know, you aren’t in a position to speak so boldly, not with your father’s condition,” he said, leering down at her. He reduced her words to nonsensical fodder, nothing more than a non sequitur meant to bewilder him. Though his words were nearly the same in nature to hers, his superiority excused them by his standards. The reaction they earned made his pride swell and he chuckled with a sickening smugness when Kali’s lips parted and her eyebrows drew together in a tantalizing show of confusion.

He stalked toward the door with movements far from limber, pleased beyond words. Doused in his own sense of victory, he knew that Kali would eventually come crawling to him for answers in that circumspect manner of hers and when she did he’d be more than willing to make her work for such. At that moment, he realized that his want for her was strong enough to drive him delirious. An infatuation far from love or any feeling associated with romance infiltrated his mind at the thought for, as long as he didn’t love her and she stood under his control, such a thing couldn’t be a weakness.

At the same moment, Kali wanted nothing more than to be the one with the power to throw the despicable Mr. Ren over the railing, plummeting to his death.


	6. A New Resident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux joins the Felian-Ren household to work closely with Kylo.

It was around the same time that Kylo decided he would infiltrate a nearby city suspected of underground rebel activity that Mr. Hux took up residence in the Felian-Ren household. A measure taken for the sake of business, it had failed to be mentioned to Kali until the moment Hux stepped over the threshold and removed his shoes as if he belonged there. It was then that Father turned to Kali who stood at the landing of the winding staircase, clutching the railing so tightly her knuckles whitened, and said, as if surprised he’d forgotten to mention it, “Oh, yes, Mr. Hux will be staying with us, dear.”

If there was ever a time for Kali to fear her secret’s exposure it was then. As she stared into the cool eyes of the man who knew only the worst aspects of her, she found herself wrestling within her mind for control over her personalities. Was she X? Was she Kali? The only thing the two had in common was the fear. It was great as it pulsed through their shared veins. Their heart beat painfully, so loudly they feared it as loud and constant as the tick of the old grandfather clock in the dining room. Their throat constricted tightly as they fought to swallow what little saliva their mouth produced.

When they spoke, it was X who forced the words out. “What a pleasant surprise,” she said, speaking as if her worlds did not lay shattered at her feet. X released the railing and held herself up without shaking while Kali retreated to the farthest corner of her mind. She smiled wanly as Hux regarded her hungrily without any care for her father’s presence.

It excited him, seeing the way she struggled to decide her place. Was she the rebel whore or the pure daughter of a loyal embalmer? Was she a fighter or was she all talk? He had no interest in Kali. No, he was pulled in by X and he could get X if he pushed Kali, if he scared her enough. He returned the smile with a curt nod before addressing Father without allowing his eyes to stray from the form he longed to bend over the railing and ravish. “Will _Kali_ be showing me to my room?” he asked.

Father smiled, a strained smile, as his eyes narrowed. He noticed the carnivorous look in Hux’s ambitious eyes. He recognized it as he had with Kylo when Kali pranced around the house in various stages of undress. If there was something he couldn’t stand about his daughter, it was the way she tempted men. He feared he raised a flimsy toy to be passed around by the officers. Didn’t she know how sinful female sensuality could be? _Yes, well it’s all the same. If she marries him it won’t matter how he looks at her_ . “Ah, _yes_. Kali, dear, he’ll be staying in the guest room down the hall from your bedroom.”

Kylo stepped onto the landing behind Kali, staring down at Hux with bitter disdain written across his features. He appeared to read the air between the man and Kali and nodded as if coming to his own conclusion. “You’ve fucked,” he said, his words prompting shock. He spoke without a doubt in the authenticity of his words. The awkward glances, the increased mentions, the late arrivals, they all suddenly clicked together for him. His blood boiled and he clenched his jaw, eyes darting from Kali to Hux.

“Father, _please_ ,” Kali snapped. “I can’t stay here with him.” The house with both Kylo and Hux felt too small, too cramped, and they hadn’t been each other’s presence for more than a small sum of minutes. How could she survive a day, a week, a month? She couldn’t. She had to leave. Perhaps to the cabin her grandparents had left to her in their will or the apartment her father had bought for her, the one she used on nights when she knew she couldn’t enter the house without endangering her other life.

“Mr. Hux, Kali will show you to your room,” Father said, his eyes never leaving the towering form of Kylo as he moved to stand beside Kali. The old man barely suppressed a smile at the possessive way Kylo wrapped his hand around her wrist.

“ _No!_ I want to know when this began!” Kylo roared.

“You’ve misread the situation, Mr. Ren,” Hux said. He stepped forward as if about to climb the stairs, but caught himself as he appeared to think better of approaching Kylo. “I assure you, I haven’t _touched_ this lovely young woman.”

Kylo turned abruptly, dragging Kali with him, and stomped through the corridor the guest room across from Kali’s own chamber and a few doors away from his own where he was sure Father planned to welcome Hux. He kicked the door open, the heel of his shoe sinking into the wood with a loud crash. The knob collided with the wall with enough force to dent it. He dragged Kali into the room, nearly tossing her in the direction of the bed, before turning and slamming the door behind them.

Kali trembled as she watched Kylo unleash his rage on the furniture, kicking apart everything he could reach. He wrenched open the closet doors and pulled the spare sheets from the shelf, tossing some and ripping others. He paused his rampage only when he heard footsteps nearing the door. In a moment of temporary sanity, he dragged the dresser from its place across the room and pushed it against the door to keep everyone out. Kali flattened herself against the wall and held her breath, hoping that he would tire himself out before he did whatever he planned to do to her.

Kylo stood in front of the dresser, panting and glowering at the door as it shook beneath the weight of Hux’s fists. When he addressed Kali, he didn’t turn to look at her. “Be honest. Have you fucked him?” His words hung in the air for a moment, floating in the sudden calamity.

“No, I haven’t,” she whispered. And it wasn’t a lie, technically, because _Kali_ had never been intimate with Hux. No, that was entirely _X_ and Kylo didn’t need to know anything about her. “He scares me,” she admitted. The words worked as a catalyst and tears spilled over her eyelids, rolling down her cheeks, not even a moment after she uttered them.

Kylo, completely unaware of how to deal with Kali’s tears, continued his rampage, slightly comforted by her words though he knew they were nothing more than a bold lie. He read her tears as guilt and her fear as aimed at himself. None of it mattered, though, he thought, because she was his and would always be his whether she slept with every man in town other than himself or moved to another district. She belonged to him.

 

* * *

 

“It only makes sense for me to accompany you,” Hux was saying.

It was late and nearly silent. The house around the two men was completely still. The only light emitted from the lamp on Kylo’s desk as he pored over his colleague’s reports. He hunched over his desk in an awkward stance, ignoring Hux as he stared at him.

“I know my way around the city. I’ve already infiltrated the lower ranks. The people, they don’t take kindly to newcomers in the quarter,” Hux continued, his voice rising slightly. He eyed his colleague, watching him for any sign of a reaction to this news. The more Kylo ignored him, the more agitated he became. Still, he felt more than accomplished, knowing that the man wanted something he couldn’t have, the deceiving Kali. “She has a mole on her left breast, maybe an inch from the areola.”

Kylo stiffened in his seat.

“You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get her w-!”

“Engaging in such activities outside of intimate relationships is not only immoral, but illegal in certain districts, if I remember correctly,” Kylo murmured. He pressed his lips into a thin line and tossed the reports away as he stood abruptly. “Now, you claim that there’s rebel activity above ground. In one of the most heavily populated cities outside of the First Order’s territory. But our influence has finally reached them, I’m guessing.” He paused and glanced at Hux, resisting the urge to sink his fingers into the man’s light eyes.

“It’s more than a claim.” Hux leaned forward and peered at Kylo for a moment, considering the younger male with a shrewd gaze, before continuing. “Below our feet may be the heart of the operation, but the brain is beside us. I cut off the brain, the heart stops beating. No blood flow and the entire operation goes cold and all that’s left to do is clean it up.” He sat back in his chair, evidently pleased with himself judging by the smirk so foreign on a more often than not scowling face.

“I’m aware of that,” Kylo spat, shoving his chair back and propelling himself to his feet in one violent motion. He turned and paced the space between his desk and the large window through which moon light filtered. The pale light gave his skin a translucent glow, further emphasizing the dark circles beneath his eyes. He was tired of overbearingly mind numbing inactivity. Staring out of the window, he came to a sudden stop and his eyes focused on the city that lay before him. “I can blow up a whole damn city if I want…”

“Reckless line of thought, as expected of you,” Hux muttered under his breath.

“Is it?” Kylo murmured, sardonic in his delivery. “Haven’t I always taken down anything that stood in my way?”

Hux’s mouth went dry and his eyes widened by a fraction, nearly undetectable. The thud of his heart seemed to grow louder and louder with each beat as Kylo’s words replayed over and over again in his mind. He stared at the raven haired male and wondered if he, too, stood in his way. Of course not, right? He was indispensable, he thought, but with his reports in Kylo’s possession and Kylo’s general disdain for him -combined with his envy- might push the impulsive leader to do away with whatever he saw fit.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Kylo asked, returning to his seat. He brought his elbows onto the desk, folding his hands in front of his face as he regarded the copper haired man who sat before him. He wanted Hux to know that he was still in charge, to his greatest extent. Though they were equals in nearly all aspects of the word, Kylo expected Hux to accept his fate as second tier when matters involved Kali. Tasting a bit of Kylo’s dream didn’t elevate Hux, no, it only made him more of a target. “We’ll plan tomorrow.”

Kylo watched Hux exit his study without a word. His thoughts had already settled on Kali before the door had closed with a soft click. As he fell victim to his own fantasies, he imagined himself as the one who knew all of the secrets of her body. Such a thought brought a thrill to him, knowing every curve of her body, every mark on her skin, the taste of her as she begged for satisfaction. Knowing that Hux had had her only made him want her more in that way that children become jealous when others touch their favorite toy.


	7. Reprieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kali retreats to her apartment.

Long instances of feeling something and feeling nothing filled the hours of her day. Periods of emotions equivalent to the sensation of staring at the same gray wall dulled her thoughts. She hadn’t moved from her chair since she’d entered her apartment. A record skipped on the same line over and over again, repeating it and drilling the words into her mind. The phone rang, but she couldn’t pull together the energy needed to answer it.

At the back of her mind, fear tapped into her thoughts. It tainted her consciousness, a dull reminder of her current situation. She felt utterly trapped in a life she didn’t belong to whenever she turned her eyes to the person reflected in the mirror like surface of the glass doors leading out onto the tiny balcony. She watched the sun rise, watched the reflection fade out of existence and wondered who it was, though she knew she was looking at herself in the same way she knew time progressed without truly understanding the purpose of it in its entirety. She knew her time was running out, that Father would eventually demand her presence and then… Then she wouldn’t be safe.

Running away wasn’t an option. Kylo would find her. He could find anything if he put his mind to it.

The elevator doors slid open with a soft hiss. Footsteps, soft and shy footsteps, dragged her eyes away from the window and into the warm brown eyes of the daughter of one of Father’s colleagues. Kali sighed, feeling the weight of another tedious task settle on her chest. Did her father think himself clever, sending a woman she rarely spoke to to fetch her? Did he really think someone he nearly paid to be Kali’s friend would drag her from the fog of her misery (though he wasn’t sure she was miserable)?

The girl averted her gaze once she took in the state of Kali, with her hair down and her lips painted in a shade only commonly seen on the mouths of actresses and loose women. Stripped down to her underwear, Kali had curled up on her chair without a thought for modesty should someone come looking for her. 

“Have you ever felt this way, Noam?” Kali asked, her voice raspy and thick with the threat of tears. Her eyes glistened, red and irritated from hours on end of crying in intervals whenever she got the chance to really consider herself. She unwound her limbs only to wrap her arms around herself as she stared up at Noam. She wished she was Noam, sweet and innocent and not at all bothered by the schism between the world she was born into and the world to which she belonged and the hands of the one man she wanted nothing to do with, but felt drawn to by years of conditioning.

“Felt what way?” Noam replied, her cheeks burning. She ran her fingers through her short hair before turning away and crossing her arms over her chest. Having gone from polite conversation to seeing Kali nearly naked, the jump felt too large and impersonal and bothered her beyond words. Specifically, it was the slight thrill she got knowing that she’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to. To feel something so wrong only made her more flustered and embarrassed.

“Afraid,” Kali whispered. Her voice was so low she wasn’t sure that Noam heard her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care as long as she said the words that had been itching at the back of her throat for a while now. “That man has come to live with us. The way he looks at me… I’m afraid he’ll be waiting for me…!” Her thoughts shifted from Hux to Kylo. “The other one, he thinks he owns me. There’s no love… though I’m not sure that I want love. Not from him, at least, not the kind of love he can give.” She considered her words for a moment, stuck on the thought of Kylo in love. Someone so cruel and evil, certainly he couldn’t love.

“Of course I’ve been afraid before!” Noam replied, laughing. “Who isn’t afraid of one thing or the other?” Kali’s words were lost on her.

“Yes, you’re right,” Kali murmured, dragging herself to her feet. The crushing sensation of being completely alone in the fog of her own despair washed over her and she suddenly felt both too heavy and too light. Her arranged friend didn’t understand what she meant, her father would skin her if he knew, and her current society didn’t want to protect women, especially not the ones who walked nearly naked before crowds for money, for entertainment. “Could you start a bath for me?”

Noam rushed off to the bathroom ahead of Kali with a curt nod, eager to please and free herself of the sight of Kali’s body. There was already water in the bath when Noam arrived, nearly halfway filled as if Kali had wanted to bathe but had distracted herself. She sank to her knees to drain the tub and it nearly surprised her, how desperate she must have looked. Running around like a maid to please Kali as if there was any reason to please the woman. Oh, but there was a reason. The man she lived with who everyone was sure she would marry and make her much more important than just an embalmer.

Kali appeared in the doorway, naked and smoking. There wasn’t anything inherently sexual about her in the moment other than her flagrant nudity, but her eyes were near erotic with her eyelids hanging low and her hues shining through the threads of smoke which slipped from her lips. She leaned against the wall, not yet ready to alert Noam to her presence, though the acrid scent of smoke gave her away.

Noam’s eyes widened, her mouth going slack as she drank in the sight before her. Her neck ached from the way she twisted it to gape at Kali, but she couldn’t bring herself to move a single muscle as her eyes traveled over the woman’s form. From her toes, (Noam noticed that her toenails were carefully clipped at painted a conservative mauve) up her hairless shins, to her curving thighs where the muscles beneath her skin flexed as she shifted slightly. Finally, her eyes landed where she’d never dreamed for them to ever land.

A perfect triangle of cropped dark hair led down to an entrancing view. It brought a slew of words that only left the mouths of perverted young men jeering on street corners late at night and pubescent boys as they moaned about the girls who invaded their dreams. It was lewd, the sight of her skin, slightly darker between her hips, but smooth and begging to have someone’s fingers comb through the patch of hair before moving to spread apart the lips that covered paradise.

“That’s… um… You shave yourself down there?” Noam choked out, blushing and looking away.

“No, I go in to get it waxed,” Kali replied.

“I didn’t know respectable ladies did that sort of thing,” Noam mumbled under her breath. “It seems lewd, doesn’t it? Isn’t it better to let it be as the gods intended? Don’t men like it that way?” There was a slight edge to her voice and her tone seemed to insinuate that her words were more than just vague questions, but barely concealed taunts aimed at Kali.

“I’ve cleaned a few respectable ladies and they were all smooth as a child. The gods may want it one way, but men like it differently. Anyway, how would you know what men like? Aren’t you a virgin, or have you been spilling a bit too much at confessions?” Kali’s tone was crisp, her mind working at its normal pace in response to Noam’s snide commentary. She’d been pulled out of her fog only slightly, though. A heaviness still weighed down her limbs and fatigue still played with her body and, try as she may, she couldn’t force herself to feel much outside numbness and the varying gray feelings of sadness and irritation.

Noam started to reply, but her words caught in her throat as Kali dragged her fingertips across her clavicle. Her eyes followed the movement of Kali’s hand when she allowed it to rest heavily above her breasts. A woman’s body could be mesmerizing when she was so obviously in distress.

“I don’t want to feel this way,” Kali mumbled, advancing suddenly toward the bath already filling with hot water. A dull pain caressed her skin where the water touched her, leaving the areas sensitive and tinted red. “I suppose I’m expected home. Home again, back to him, back to _him_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly feel like an old pervert when I think about what I'm writing here. There's no Kylo action here, but it's coming.


	8. Callings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's entrance into the world of rebellion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In honor of Leo finally obtaining an Oscar, I've posted another chapter. Amazing.

“Kylo Ren.”

Silence pressed in heavily from all corners of the room. Eyes swiveled in their sockets, heads turning to follow the movement. For a moment, the world seemed to pause with its glass raised nearly to its dry lips. Even the lights ceased to flicker, catching themselves in that moment between brightness and darkness and casting hazy crimson glow over the many masked faces.

“Why would you call yourself that?” The idea of anyone with any amount of heart taking that name -that wretched, horrible name- bothered the owner beyond words. As his eyes focused on the tall man before him, he felt his blood run cold and his mouth grow dry. His gloved fingers stiffened when he moved to bend the digits. The overwhelming presence of this _Kylo Ren_ character shook his soul.

“How would he feel, knowing that someone who embodies everything he hates shares a name with him?” Kylo shot back. The distortion of his voice beneath his mask pleased him to no end as it seemed to increase the gravity of his words. He’d thought out his explanation for hours, alternating between options based on which ones would prove to bring the most dramatic reaction.

When his question was met with a slight shift in mood which seemed to suggest begrudging respect and awe, he nodded his head and gestured at nothing in particular. “ _Exactly_ ,” he said. Slowly, the hum of conversation replaced the silence and the owner slumped over the counter again, lighting a cigarette. Kylo watched the man take a long drag, staring at the hints of burned skin that occupied the space between where his gloves ended at his wrists and his sleeves ended, rolled up around his elbows.

“You’re wondering about my scars,” the owner murmured, his cigarette bobbing as he spoke. His hands groped for something behind the bar as he spoke. “Your namesake.” He slammed an ornate key on the smooth surface, fingering the cool metal. “A few years ago, not that long, I was living underground. It was an air raid. Something must have started a fire and it climbed all the way up to my apartment.” He paused and snatched his cigarette from between his lips, running a finger across them.

 _Should I feel guilty?_ Kylo tossed the notion aside without taking a moment to consider it. He knew the effects of his work. But every life lost, every rebel burned, brought him closer to the ultimate goal and there was no time to allow the thought of pitying those he’d left to scale the ruins. For him, their lives mattered as much as dust; they only mattered when they built up enough to cover a surface and then it only took a small swipe to send them flying elsewhere, to clean the surface. Too much dust could cause loss of breath, trigger an asthmatic fit, end in death by asphyxiation. Getting rid of it was necessary.

The owner laughed wryly to himself. “The doorknob exploded in my hand as I pulled the door open…” He paused and licked his lips, laughing again. “The last thing I remember is a wall of flames closing in on me. It fucking hurt, but I’m alive.” His tone grew grave as he added, “That’s why I hate that bastard, Ren. He’s too ruthless, he doesn’t have even a piece of a heart.”

Kylo tensed in his seat, stilled by the warmth of Hux’s hand on his shoulder gently pushing him down. The air around him grew hot with rage as he silently seethed. He wished the owner had been caught in the flames, that he’d slithered his way through them as his skin peeled away until he emerged just outside their reach as nothing but a charred heap of bones. He shrugged Hux’s hand from his shoulder and surveyed the establishment.

People spread themselves out at booths, conversing between themselves. Masks blocked facial expressions, but body language suggested a sort of nonchalance beneath the red haze. A row of doors spilled into a corridor which disappeared behind a sharp corner. They opened and closed like mouths, spilling people from them like broken teeth. The escorts (as Hux had called them earlier) milled about, scantily clad and less capable of walking upright with each round of drinks and admirers.

“Interested in buying company?” Hux asked, leaning toward his companion.

“Indulging is a matter of legality,” Kylo replied, coolly. As he spoke, he saw a couple fall upon each other in their haste, kissing each other as if they might never get the chance to do so again. Their hands roamed over their lithe forms, pulling away at clothing like it was nothing more than paper, nothing more than a thin barrier that couldn’t do its job. Such raw, hollow passion.

“Matter of legality…” Hux’s thin lips pulled back into a sneer, baring his teeth behind his mask. He snorted and resisted the urge to call the man beside him a hypocrite. “You _kill_ people,” he spat. Kylo Ren, a man seemingly without morals, could set fire to entire families without blinking, but the mention of paying someone for pleasure forced him to ponder the repercussions of such. To Hux, fucking was more natural and morally correct than killing (though he wouldn’t hesitate to do either).

“Do you know when a man is weakest?” Kylo’s voice dropped low, so quiet it was barely perceptible above the din of music he could feel shake his bones and voices that melded together into a growling roar. His eyes faded in and out of focus as he stared blankly ahead.

“On his deathbed.”

“No, when he’s coming undone. There’s no control in the moment of climax.” He planned to continue, but she made him swallow his words. When he saw her, he knew. He didn’t know yet what he knew, but he knew that he knew something, something important. And whatever it was that he knew stared back at him, lurking in her eyes, murky as swamps and, yet, clear as a crisp blue sky. When his eyes met hers (hers couldn’t meet his with the intimidating mask serving as a barricade) the urge to growl at her like some sort of rabid predator ripped through his being.

Her eyes gleamed. His mask reflected the glare of the light. Though he towered over her, she overpowered him with her gaze alone. For a moment, they shed the skin of humans and slid into the hides of wolves with bared fangs and low guttural sounds escaping their mouths. She bowed first, literally, with a nod of her head. He invited her approach  with the slightest flick of his hand, his ego inflated by her submission.

“I’ll take you.”

“I won’t be taken, not tonight.”

His ego deflated, but he pushed on. He felt nearly dizzy, high off adrenaline and too enticed by her to let her escape without dipping into her. There was a tugging he felt drawing him nearer and nearer to her. His fingers burned from the promise of laying them against her skin, a smooth expanse illuminated before his starving eyes. The words he’d spoken not even a moment before were long forgotten. He thought he might like to indulge if it was with her whose eyes told him something he couldn’t quite place yet. “How will you avoid being taken?”

Hux’s smirk faltered and turned away from the woman, his pulse loud in his own ears. Allowing the dimness of the establishment to protect him, he engaged the owner with bland small talk. Something he’d forgotten, something monumental now that it faced him. His cover had long since slipped away. Kali -X- already knew too much about him. Parading around with a man claiming the calling of the intimidating leader of a cult like following, it wouldn’t take much for X to figure out his game. What had initially seemed to be another official tasting the darkness would be revealed for what it was: a small mistake within a plan to dismantle disorder.

As much as he liked the idea of showing his face to X and disliked the idea of what might come from her interacting with Kylo, he knew it was best to entirely abandon the situation. But as he walked away, he couldn’t shake the barrage of questions that lay hold on his mind. Why would X be interested in anyone similar in anyway to the man whose name alone drained the blood from her face, the man she claimed to hate more than himself? Did she already know? What game was she playing? By the time the thought crossed his mind and he thought to warn Ren, the two had already disappeared.

The door slid shut behind X, the last sliver of light swallowing itself. For several long moments, there was nothing but silence and blackness. Their eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness until they could both just barely make out the outlines of each other, catch the gleam of her wet, shining eyes. His breath escaped in soft, quiet puffs as she moved. He felt the air shift as she walked, the hairs on the back of his neck standing as he imagined the heat of her body radiating off of her skin in fiery waves. Unwittingly, his fingers were drawn to her as she drew herself to him.

He knew she was in front of him, but when he reached blindly his fingers clutched air. Her eyes burned familiarly, so close. He might have sworn that he could feel her breath, fanning out across his chest with every heavy exhale, if not for the fact that it was impossible to feel such through the layers of his clothing. Again, he reached for her, more desperate this time, and his hand met hers, as if she’d been holding hers out to him for a while. As her digits intertwined with his, he longed to remove his gloves and feel her skin against his.

“Why do you call yourself that?” she asked.

“It bothers you.”

“If it does?”

Kylo wanted to see her face to measure his reaction. Her words hung before him, pulling unease from him. What did she want from this conversation? Was she trying to tell him that she knew he wasn’t a vengeful rebel who wanted nothing more than to tarnish his own name for the sake of irritating Kylo if it was the only thing he could do? He shook his head, shaking the thought away. _Of course she doesn’t know._ How could she? “I do it to spite the bastard,” he finally replied.

Suddenly, the room was bathed in cool indigo light, a mournful hue that brought to mind every dirty secret he held to himself. The room was nearly bare, he could see. In every direction, he could see himself reflected. Mirrors for wall both excited and unnerved him. In the center of the room stood a bed beside which the woman stood. She ran her fingers over an ornate obsidian bedpost as she sank down onto the mattress. Her blue tinged skin stood out beautifully against the white covers and pillows.

“No touching tonight,” she purred.

“You think I’ll be back.”

“I know,” she replied, her tone dismissive. She kneeled on the bed, thighs spread apart and hands flat against the mattress behind her. Her back curved into a tempting arch as she allowed her head to tip back, her hair tumbling over her shoulders. The cups of her bra slid down to reveal the dark skin of her nipples, erect and beckoning Kylo toward the bed.

Kylo took a step forward, another, gaining confidence until he strode up to her. Joining her on the bed, his eyes devoured her form as she reclined, shifting until she lay comfortably among the heap of pillows. “Remove your mask,” he whispered, his voice dripping with arousal even through the distortion of his mask. He held his breath as she pulled her mask from her face. As his eyes traveled the newly revealed features, his blood boiled. Those lips, naturally pouting, her slightly flared nostrils, the well constructed definition of her cheek bones pressing against her skin, the familiar arch of thick eyebrows, and those eyes, the emerald hues he’d known for so long.

“What’s your name?”

“X.”

_Liar._


	9. Agreement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Kali discuss their relationship

Terror swallowed her breath. Too aware of his presence, her heart answered his movements. He moved suddenly, her heart forgot to do its job for a mind splitting moment. He moved slowly, and her heart worked with such passion her body burned like an overworked generator. The hair on the back of her neck stood tall, her muscles constricted almost painfully, and her eyes burned as they followed his movements.

But her terror was tainted. Pure white stains on her crimson fear permeated the vividly colored fabric of her emotions. With such power, with such force, waves of sin ran through her, traveling across pale flesh beneath her skin to prod at every nerve in an almost pleasing manner. Arousal. She’d never noticed how well they fit together, the opposite poles drawn naturally to each other. They  stole her breath, making her head spin and her thoughts slip from her. Simply standing in the doorway, watching him, drove her nearly mad.

Kylo, silent and plotting, dominated her thoughts. His mask hid his face, but his amusement was clear. As was his anger, leaving him to seethe silently. The pure eroticism she seemed to emanate though she hadn’t moved, but to shudder as she sighed, her midnight lips glistening in the dim light. He stood a distance from the bed, considering his next words. She was a liar, he knew very well, but so was he. “You know who I am,” he said, as casually as if he was simply mentioning the weather. He watched her saunter toward the bed, slowly, taunting him with her movements. When the mattress dipped with her added weight, he fought the urge to reach for her. She stretched across the bed, lithe limbs sprawling across the mattress.

“I wouldn’t say I _know_ , but I have my suspicions,” she replied, coolly. Kali had recognized him the moment he’d set foot in the establishment. No one could master such a uniquely domineering gait, not even a man claiming his name. But what made her take him in? What unfathomable force whispered into her ear and told her to reveal herself to him? And what misfortune was it that she would find that she wanted him nearly as much as she desired air? Was he not the same man whose eyes she could hardly meet when in the discomfort of her own home? It was ludicrous, the very notion of wanting him physically and hating him so much.

“You’ll keep your mouth shut.”

“Of course,” she said. She sat up on the bed, folding her arms over her chest, suddenly flustered and cold. A hatred within her flared and she inhaled deeply. It wasn’t a matter of choice, she knew. Whatever business Kylo had in her territory was his alone, but she knew that he wasn’t the type to simply _stray_. To herself, she whispered, “Of course.” There were other ways to catch him. Again, that familiar dull gray feeling settled over her as she stole a glance at him, at that forsaken mask. She had options, she realized, but taking him out of one world would ruin her other. If Kylo disappeared, Hux would take over and she feared his rule.

Kylo’s eyes narrowed, recognizing the shift in her gaze. She seemed to stare through him, at something in the distance. He advanced too quickly for her to react, his hand hovering in the air before her cheek, held back by her only request. The threat of being slapped had thrown her back into reality, clearing her eyes of their film, and reminded her again how much she both feared and despised Kylo. All of that power… all ready to tear her apart… But he hadn’t touched her. He’d _listened_. It was only a show of control, Kylo reminding himself to obey. “You’ll teach me everything there is to know about this society,” he hissed.

Kali started to reply, her lips pulling back into a sneer, but caught herself. Reeling herself in as she always did, keeping safe behind the line, she bowed her head again. Approaching Kylo as X had been so easy, coming to her with the ease of a light breeze, but the facade dropped with her mask. X’s overwhelming arousal, Kali’s fear, they seeped away to make space for the person caught between them to feel so caught and helpless. After a long pause, she cleared her throat and nodded. X surged through the barrier that was Kali, freeing her tongue for long enough to spit out, “It’s not like I have a choice in the matter.”

“Yes, well, you should’ve stuck to embalming,” Kylo murmured. He patted his pockets until his fingers knocked against his silver cigarette case. Collapsing onto the bed beside Kali, he removed his mask with a heavy sigh. He snatched the case from his pocket, running his fingers over the carved, cool surface. A wave of thoughts threatened to drown him, but he clutched the shore of reality with just enough force to keep himself aware. The case opened with a sharp click and Kylo removed a cigarette, slowly. As he lifted it to his lips, he turned to survey Kali. He couldn’t be sure, but he was fairly certain she’d paled at the sight of his face uncovered. “I want what I’m paying for,” Kylo mumbled, his eyes trained on hers.

“To be clear,” Kali began, kneeling behind the coal haired man who emanated power. “It’s only sex. Think of me like a hotel room: it’s nice and exciting the first few times, but it loses its charm eventually.” She paused, cocking an eyebrow, and ran her fingers through her hair. She didn’t know if her words were true -honestly, they weren’t her own to decide their authenticity- or if she’d thrown them out to keep Kylo at bay. Traversing the depths of eroticism with a man she feared more than respected both scared and excited her. Afraid of his power, yet eager to see him completely raw and vulnerable she found herself torn between herself again.

“Do you know what I’ve thought of every night for the last several years, Kali?”

“It’s X, and, no, I don’t have a clue.”

Kylo placed his cigarette between his lips, nodding. Producing a lighter, he sighed, an irritated and condescending noise to pierce the silence. The flame of the lighter cast an orange shadow across his visage, flickering and temporary. His eyes flashed mischievously, two gleaming orbs filled with a smug pride. “Fucking your cunt,” he replied, shrugging.

Kali grimaced, flinching away from Kylo. “That’s beyond disgusting,” she said, sneering before she could stop herself. She hesitated, measuring Kylo’s reaction. The part of her enraptured by the thought of the most conservative man she knew succumbing to his own sexuality craved more, wanting to know every detail of his impurity. It was with the same petty joy of stepping in fresh snow simply to break the smooth canvas that she whispered, “How do you think about doing it?” Her pulse quickened, her blood rushed through her body, her eyes burned, and she had to focus to breathe. She would’ve given anything for him to be anyone else, any other stranger craving company because then -and only then- did she think that she might fully enjoy corrupting him.

“I’ll show you,” Kylo replied.

Kali shook her head, pressing her lips together. “This is so _wrong_ ! I hate you. You hate me! Fuck! Why’d _you_ have to show up here?” The longer they sat around without touching her, the more repulsed she grew with herself. For wanting him, for purposely bringing him to a room, for fearing him, for obeying him. A wave of self loathing threatened to crash over her.

“No, _you_ don’t hate me. _Kali_ hates me, but X, X wants me,” Kylo murmured, smoke seeping from his lips.

“I’m only Kali, Kylo. I’m not two people.”

“And I’m not three…” He inhaled deeply, feeling the mattress shift as Kali moved to sit beside him. “It’s only fucking. We’ll end up doing it eventually once we’re married. Think of it as practice.”

“It’s _only_ fucking. Nothing else,” Kali said, nodding. “But I have some rules.” She waited for Kylo to nod before continuing. “You’re not allowed to kiss me. It’s too intimate. If you do it, I’ll propose to Hux the same day. You’ll have to wear your mask because I don’t want to see your face. I don’t want to be afraid while we’re… We’re both allowed to have relationships outside of this arrangement and um… Well, about teaching you about this _society_ , as you put it, we’re not on the same side.” She stared at him, and, in a grave tone, said, “I’ll die for the Resistance, Mr. Ren.”

“Fine. You don’t have to agree with what I do, you need only teach me and I won’t involve you.”

“One more thing,” Kali said, averting her gaze. “There will be no falling in love.” She met Kylo’s glare, her eyes burning with determination. A bit more firmly, she repeated herself, “There will be _no_ falling in love.” Though she knew it wouldn’t be an issue what with the state of their past, she wanted to be sure he understood that their relationship didn’t equate to love or any sort of romantic feeling. “I’ll kill you if you fall in love with me.” The words hung over their heads for several long moments that felt to stretch into eternity.

“Prepare yourself for me,” Kylo said, breaking the silence. “We’ll continue this at home.”

 


	10. Is She Broken?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux has gone too far this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING  
> also I was watching young Brendan Fraser (what a babe) while writing this, so please excuse the terrible writing

Five curving cuts, bright red crescents among irritated skin, stung pleasantly as the air kissed them. Her satin nightgown had been pushed up around her hips, the pale pink fabric bunched and torn in places. The flimsy straps of the garment had snapped like blades of grass between his fingers. Her exposed chest heaved with the effort of breath.

Breathing. An alien task. Her throat burned with every intake of air. Like swallowing gravel, she felt the debris tear at her throat, ripping her from the inside. She might have screamed if simply breathing wasn’t so excruciating a task. She licked her lips, tongue running over the split skin to taste the metallic wine of the coeur, so warm and fresh a reminder of his teeth grinding against hers as he’d forced the intimacy of a kiss. Her sore neck, she feared, would never forget the imprint of his fingers wrapped so tightly around it.

Her thighs, forcefully spread apart, were littered with new bruises. Absently, her fingers prodded lightly at paradise turned purgatory. She felt that all of Hell’s flames had torn through her at that place and ripped her apart. Like a demon had ravished her, using her blood as lubricant. The crimson fluid colored the tips of her fingers, hot and tainted by his parting gift. She held her hand above her face, eyes straining to see it through the darkness and the blur of tears.

Around her, the house was still, the night unfazed and uninterrupted by its events. People continued to live their lives, free of the knowledge of her, of him. In a few hours, the sun would rise with the world’s inhabitants and no one would know and no one would care. No one beside herself, no one beside him. That same night, that same matter of minutes, existed in the eyes of billions separately. In her eyes, it was a night akin to her own murder. In his, she imagined, it was a night akin to reaching for the heavens and having his fingertips kissed by every hallowed deity. To everyone else, she imagined, it was a night like no other.

Kali couldn’t help but think that it would have been another unremarkable night if she had or hadn’t done a number of things. Locked her bedroom door. Insisted on visiting her apartment. Stayed later at the funeral home. Didn’t decide to finish the bottle of her father’s favorite wine. Didn’t try to refuse him and done what she usually did. Didn’t tell him what she’d done with Kylo and made him so angry. _If_ , what a fanciful term. Like _almost_ , it was nearly there, just out of her reach, a moment passed. Meaningless, her musings were. What was done was done and he’d gone as quickly as he had come, leaving her alone with this troublesome burden.

When Kali had cried herself silly, she crawled out of her bed and dragged herself toward the bathroom on the level. Stumbling through the hallway, clutching the wall to steady herself, her sobs escaped, these mournful noises begging no one and everyone for sympathy she felt she didn’t deserve. Afterall, had she not placed herself in such a circumstance for it to occur? She crumpled to her knees on the floor just outside of the bathroom door and then she dragged herself over the tiles, desperate to cleanse her skin of the filth, of his memory.

Her head pounded, her temples throbbing along with the rest of her body. How would she explain the damage to her father? Kylo? With shaking fingers, she peeled off her nightgown, letting the fabric fall to the floor with a soft swish. In the moonlight, she saw the blood drying on the insides of her thighs and her stomach clenched painfully and she envied every person in the world who lay untouched by the horrors of her night.

When she stepped into the shower and felt the water pelt her skin, scalding and painfully comforting, she wanted nothing more than to cease existing. It was a pointless fight to live trapped. She’d never seen faces so free of worry as those of the dead. She imagined herself lying on her father’s operating table as naked as she’d been when she’d entered the world. What expression would he wear as he made up her face and decolletage to cover the bruises? Or would he dress her in a high collared garment to hide her shame? Would he cry? She hoped he would cry for someone as worthless as herself, someone who deserved only to be pushed into a cardboard box and thrown into the dirt to decompose.

Kali felt tainted. And no amount of water could wash her skin free of sin.

She stumbled from the shower with a hollow sob that set fire to her throat again, fingers grasping for the robe she’d dropped earlier when she bathed. Standing in the same place, breathing the same way in the same body, she felt completely transformed. She caught her reflection in the mirror, barely a silhouette in the darkness. Clean of blood, her bruises had darkened to angry purple marks that shown so harshly against her skin that her eyes were drawn to them in a cruel way. A few strands of hair remained in her tie, the rest pulled from it by his fingers, so claw like in those moments. Her hair curled wildly into the air, damp and a tangled mop of loose coils. Her eyes, wide and empty, shone with a madness she’d never known.

Her feet slapped the floor as she walked, leaving puddles in her wake. Without thinking, she guided herself to the balcony. Once more, the stillness of the night bothered her. How could the world continue as it had when her world was ending? Didn’t the ground realize it was meant to be wrapped in flames? Shouldn’t the winds be strong enough to shatter windows? Didn’t she matter to the world? How out of place she felt, standing on her balcony with her robe falling open.

“I could forget about it,” she whispered, staring into the darkness. _And then what?_ Kali shook her head, humming. “It never happened and I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m _fine_ !” The words echoed in the night, weightless. _Hux’ll be back. He’ll do it again. He’ll be worse next time. You’re injured now. Kylo will want to know why you can’t have sex with him. He’ll kill you._ Kali stiffened, falling victim to her own taunts. “There’s no way out,” she whispered, as if coming to an obvious conclusion after stretches of contemplating. Her eyes found the railing keeping her from tumbling over and into the darkness.

 

* * *

 

Kylo smirked at the silence. An empty house seemed promising, an excuse to engage in illicit activities with Kali without the possibility of being caught. And she was the only person guaranteed to be home. Hux’s car was gone when he arrived and her father had called him from a seminar to say he wouldn’t be returning home for the night. Kali, he’d seen her off from her office at headquarters with a promise to discuss the resistance.

He knocked once before entering her room without waiting for a response. He paused in the doorway. The scent overwhelmed him, the pungent odor of sex. Dried blood decorated her sheets, once pristine and mauve they were now torn and stained. Pillows lay discarded on the floor around her bed, which (now that he took the time observe it) was slightly askew. Books on embalming and innumerable sheets sprawled across the floor as if tossed from her desk.

“Kali,” he called, softly. Licking his lips, he stumbled back out into the hallway. “Kali!” He bellowed, turning abruptly and storming down the corridor, pausing only to kick open each door he encountered and cast a sweeping glance over the room. Desperation quickened his movements, dulled his senses, and invited a dull throbbing to bother his temple. He nearly slid on his way back down the stairs, catching himself just in time to rest his weight on the railing and turn his head quickly with blazing eyes to examine the cause.

A puddle on the landing. A trail of drying footsteps leading down the corridor, toward the west wing of the house. The library door stood ajar, as if someone had meant to close it behind them, but had stopped mid motion, leaving a small gap between the frame and door. Inside, the shuffle of feet dragging across the carpet sounded loudly in the silence. And then all was still and silent. A picture of serenity nearly intoxicated Kylo and he relaxed, preparing to push open the door and find Kali looking for a book about her practice.

“ _Suicide_!” The door swung open with such force that Kylo almost fell backward. Wild eyes bore into his and for a fraction of a second, his confusion made way for fear to clutch him. The force of a fist colliding with his cheek startled him into rage and he lunged forward without any true plan of attack other than to hurt. Blinded by the darkness and his anger, he didn’t care to see who he was hurting, satisfied by the sensation of a body beneath his blows.

“Kali is dead!”

Kylo froze, finally taking a moment to view his victim.

“Kali is dead,” Hux repeated himself. To himself, he added in a soft sigh of relief, “And it wasn’t me who did it.”

“Dead? Interesting way of greeting you’ve developed,” Kylo murmured. He stood up, straightening his back and glaring down at his colleague. “Impossible. She has duties to be fulfilled. Bodies of officers won’t simply embalm themselves. The Resistance will not explain itself to me and allow me to tear it down. Another woman will not appear to marry me when the time arrives.” He paused, averting his gaze as his mind wandered to what he truly wanted from Kali and he flushed slightly.

“You’re aware, then, of her involvement with the rebels?” Hux asked, though he’d known Kylo to be privy to such information for days now. He desired confirmation in the way a cat seeks praise when it leaves its kill beside its owner’s bed.

“Why did you just attack me? Why are you here? Your vehicle isn’t in its designated spot, but you’re here.” Kylo narrowed his eyes, picking apart Hux’s appearance. A long scratch ran along his jaw, but otherwise he appeared as well kept as usual. Kylo clenched his jaw tightly, choosing to remain silent for long enough to unnerve the man before him. “Have you been to Kali’s room tonight, Hux?” A long pause. “Answer me!” His eyes, wide and burning with fury, shone clearly through the darkness. Long after he’d shut his mouth his words echoed through the house until his heavy inhales and exhales overwhelmed the silence and his presence pressed in on Hux from all direction.

Hux adjusted his tie and cleared his throat. “I have not visited her room tonight,” he said, shaking his head and waving his hand slightly, dismissing the notion with ease.

“Yet, you believe her to be dead.” Kylo murmured.

“There was so much blood,” Hux replied, before he could catch himself. A broken sob tore from his throat and he found that lying about her only further deepened the wound of his regret. He closed his eyes and again the image of her robe lying in the grass haunted his vision. Jolting forward, he shook his head  and attempted to cover for himself. “I passed her room. I came looking for her to discuss... _personal matters_ and she wasn’t there. I noticed the water and, well, her robe is in the yard and there’s water on the railing. There’s only one logical conclusion.”

Kylo shook his head with a smirk. “And when has that woman ever been logical?”


	11. A Knife in His Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo refuses to be weakened

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This sucks, I just wanted to move the story

The crackling hiss of a fire burning provided the scene a sense of impending dangers. His fingers drummed loudly against the smooth surface of the bar as he raised a glass to his lips. The pleasant buzzing of intoxicated thoughts left his face smooth and relaxed as he surveyed the scene through half lidded eyes. The streets were ablaze as the sun was beginning to rise. Entire buildings wore away, engulfed in fiery tongues.

And yet, he witnessed the calamity of disorder. He watched a man emerge from a burning building, striding across the burning threshold as if the flames didn’t exist. People trudged from buildings, down fire escapes with the panic and sense of urgency of sleeping cat gently roused for a meal. As if their lives were not filling with tragedy as they watched their lodgings burn. A small group of store owners and bartenders stood on the corner, bottles clinking and laughter rising, comparing the damage as if they’d done it hundreds of times before. It was just another raid to them, another First Order scheme to attempt to force the people to conform.

Kylo glanced around the empty club, slamming his glass down. Questions raced through his mind as his eyes roamed the space. He’d purposely left it untouched in the hopes of smoking out Kali, but he’d arrived to find it closed for the weekend and the doors unlocked. Inviting himself in, he wasn’t surprised to find himself surrounded by his own solitude. His anger simmered as he prepared a drink for himself, watching the rest of the street burn at his hands. Now, his anger threatened to set him aflame in the hopes of ruining something that supported Kali.

His fingers wrapped around the narrow neck of a bat leaning against the bar. He held up the bat, examining it through glassy eyes as she conquered his thoughts. If she really was dead (which she most certainly was not), he thought, then he hoped she was already rotting away at the bottom of a ditch. She deserved an undesirable demise for playing with him as she had, promising herself to him and disappearing before the moment to fully indulge arose. The desire to punish her pushed all else from his mind until his eyes could only see the image of her before him, bloody and battered and beneath him where she belonged.

The glass shattered with a satisfying scream. The pieces showered to the floor. Kylo swept another row of bottles from a shelf and grinned when the contents spilled onto the floor and flowed in the cracks between the tiles, colors mixing into a murky mess. He strode across the club, kicking and beating everything he could reach, imagining Kali instead. How would she react to his foot pressed against her stomach in the split second before she flew backward and into the wall? Would her skull crack like the glass, pieces splitting apart as cracks ran across the previously smooth surface? What if it was her blood clinging to his soles rather than wine?

Would he be pleased? Would he have achieved what he wanted in hurting her? Would she feel as helpless and tangled as she left him? Didn’t she understand that promises weren’t made to be broken? Didn’t she realize how much he hated the sight of her? Those eyes, always pulling him into her abyss, always pleading with him to abandon his inhibitions. What was he doing wanting to sleep with a criminal? He knew he should turn her in himself, pin espionage on her, and send her to an endless land of dreams beyond the realm of the living. The part of him that kept him from actively pursuing his parents though they went against everything he believed in was the part of him that craved the way his blood boiled whenever she was near.

How could she light him up and cool him down all at once? How could she steal such a sensation away from him by disappearing without a word?

 

* * *

 

“Hux,” Kylo began. “What will I do if she’s dead?”

The addressed man’s head snapped up, his eyes darting to his younger companion’s face, taking in the sight through wide eyes. Was that vulnerability he detected in Ren’s voice? Was that miserable brat really asking _him_ such a question, like they were brothers? He exhaled slowly, gazing blindly at Kylo as Supreme Leader Snoke's warnings ran through his mind.  Surely, Kylo knew better than to grow attached to Kali, especially knowing what he knew. The man had a duty to fulfill alongside Hux, one he couldn’t be distracted from by a lying whore.

 _Lying whore_. It felt wrong to brand her as such, Hux thought. Guilt crept up his spine, his heart slowing as he mulled over his actions. The night proved unforgettable from the scratches on his chest and her screams, muffled by his hand, that still rang in his mind. He hadn’t closed his eyes, afraid that he would relive the moment again and acknowledge his crimes from start to finish, from adultery to rape. No amount of praying could save him from eternal suffering. If he were to bathe in a hallowed ocean, he’d taint all of the water and the shores around it.

“You’ll live,” Hux replied, waving his hand. He turned to the monitor before him and scanned a few lines of an opened document. “It seems the people in the more crowded districts are running out of supplies. Territories loyal to the First Order have halted all trade until an agreement is met and we’re refusing to settle for anything less than a third of the land and shared control of local government holdings.” He paused, allowing himself a smug noise of content. “It seems that the people from the district we visited are near their breaking point.”

“I don’t know how to live if she isn’t involved. For a good portion of my life, I’ve devoted myself to the idea that she will be the woman I marry and rule with. I’ve incorporated her into my future and she is so deeply embedded within my plans that I fear my whole damn life will fall apart if I even _attempt_ to remove her from it. Where will I produce an heir? Who will the nations see as the wife of their leader?” Kylo ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes darkening. “It was a _promise_!” He stood abruptly, kicking his chair back.

He ran his fingers along a windowpane, his back turned to Hux. His eyes roamed over the city. Below him, hundreds of people walked with purpose. Everyone fit perfectly together, their futures secure and untouched by Kali. What he would give to be the child of a mogul, unfazed by the thought of his fiancee committing suicide. He would give up his seat and allow Hux to take it if it meant he could escape the heaviness in his chest. He placed his hand over his heart, feeling invisible fingers grip it tightly.

“There are billions of women to fill her shoes. She’s not remarkable,” Hux sighed. “If you don’t like the women enough to marry, do what her father did.”

Kylo sneered down at the people milling. Wearing uniforms, their existences could all be minimized to boring titles. A student, an officer, an office worker, another suit. Conformity at its peak stared back at Kylo. Complete and total uniformity dominated his rule. Everyone had their task and everyone did their task. If a seam came undone, it was snipped or repaired and the fabric became a square cloth of smooth edges. Except for Kali, lost Kali, who was always a loose thread appearing perfect. He thought he understood her. He’d lived with her for years and known her entire schedule, he initially believed. Now, as he stood with his eyes to the world, he realized that he never truly knew her because he never cared to know her deeply. It wasn’t a part of his plan to admit that she was another human possessing sentience.

“Hux, you pride your soldiers in the way Phasma prides her troops. They’re objects entirely at your mercy who will -without a doubt or moment of hesitation- throw their lives away, essentially, for whatever greater good you convince them to,” Kylo said. “There’s a distinct bond between yourself and your soldiers, I take it.”

“No, there isn’t. Bonds allow for weakness. How many times must the Supreme Leader drill this into your thick skull before you understand? The goal is control, not to connect intimately with or understand. I control  my soldiers and relish in the fact that they obey my orders without second guessing me. We aren’t the Knights of Ren, we aren’t lovers, we aren’t connected outside of war and training for it. The difference between my relationship with my men and yours with that wretched woman is that she has her own dealings outside of you. She isn’t devoted entirely to a cause.” Hux stopped abruptly, catching himself before he could continue and set off the volatile man before him. “Speaking of training, I notice your sessions with Supreme Leader Snoke have increased.”

Kylo nodded, his attention brought to his work. “He says I’m capable of surpassing my grandfather,” he said, after a long pause. _But I’m also capable of descending farther than my grandfather_. He’d been told over and over that in order to reach his full potential he must ignore the inhibitions of his past life and almost entirely submit to the darkness within himself. “That’s the plan, to surpass him, but I can’t do that with the rebels fighting every damn thing I attempt to do. The damn Resistance is sneaking around, probably trying to get at us,” he said, rubbing his chin.

“Only _probably_ , though… It doesn’t pose an immediate threat and, honestly, the entirety of the rebellion is more important to focus on at this point in time. Snoke said it himself that there’s no point in us allowing the Resistance to even think it matters to us,” Kylo murmured. He ran his thumb along his jaw and bounced on his heels, baring his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut. “I feel that Kali might be dead at this point. I went to the bar and no one was there and I don’t think she’d be anywhere else.” He caught himself in his state and forced himself to relax. “If she isn’t dead, I’ll have to kill her,” he remarked, after a long instance of silence.

Hux choked on air and stared at Kylo. “You were just acting as if you’d lost the love of your life and now you want to kill her?” he hissed. “Why?”

“If there’s a blade in your side, you don’t leave it there and hope for the wound to heal around it.”

     


	12. Origins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The origins of X

Moments of her life blurred in the reflection of the other’s eyes, moving too quickly for her to pick them apart. Absolute silence flooded her ears and her limbs felt both weightless and heavy when she tried to move. As if caught in rewind, she felt she was being pushed backward though she hadn’t moved since her eyes opened and stared straight into their near reflection. But it wasn’t Kali she saw reflected back at her.

A smile spreading across the woman’s lips brought a wave of pain that rippled through Kali’s body. In her head, her screams echoed loudly in the corners of her mind and she quickly shut her mouth to quiet them. Her whimpers replaced the screams, mournful bursts of noise in the silence. In the reflection’s eyes, she saw the scenes she’d grown accustomed to, the sight of a person trying to reel her in for the night, a customer’s face contorted with pleasure, people tearing each other apart for entertainment and personal agendas. It all appeared so barbaric, a perfect show of the human savagery that even the Rebellion didn’t care to acknowledge within its own ranks.

 _X_. The letter and name repeated ominously, forcing Kali’s heart to beat faster, faster, faster, too quickly. Her breaths followed suit and she gulped in air like it was the purest water to grace her rough throat. How could staring at herself reduce her to the embodiment of fear? What did she have to fear about herself, about the person she created? How could one half of the same flame cower from the other?

“Don’t think, Kali. Don’t think,” X hummed, her voice too loud in Kali’s ears. “You don’t need to think here, Kali. Don’t think.” She raised a hand to her throat and traced the bruises that mirrored Kali’s. For a moment, she stilled completely with the image of Hux burning in her dilated pupils, his teeth bared and the sound of his heavy breathing coupled with Kali’s muffled sobs replaced her voice. And then, kicked back into motion and moving too quickly for Kali to follow, she swiped her nails across her own throat, leaving behind four jagged gashes. Between the flaps of broken skin, mutilated gray flesh and torn veins and arteries. Blood flooded the gashes and formed beads along the creases of uneven flesh. like pomegranate seeds, the skin surrounding the wounds darkened and dried at an unfathomable rate.

Kali’s eyes covered everything she could see of her surroundings. There was no way out and no logical explanation of where she might be or how exactly she survived her fall. _If_ she survived at all and this void of subdued limbs and thoughts was no more than a subconscious projection of her own expectations of what might follow her death. But there was no way of truly knowing if she was alive and dreaming or dead and existing in a purgatory of her own creation. With no measurement of time, she couldn’t be sure that minutes were truly only minutes. All she knew was that she saw herself or a version of herself rip her own throat apart and continue to exist.

“A _version_ of you,” she mused, digging the nail of her index finger into her forearm. Her nail embedded itself in her skin, twisted and burrowed further until she could fit the tip of her finger into the wound, the flesh pressing in around it warm and slick with her own blood. She pulled her hand back and stared at the flooding hole and then repeated the process again on clear skin. “I’m X and you’re Kali. We’re not the same. You’re empty, Kali, picking at dead bodies and hiding from anyone who shows an interest in you.”

X threw her head back and let laughter poor from her lips like bitter wine. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, cutting off the sound suddenly, but the laughter rumbled in the back of her throat. She bit down harshly and felt her teeth split her lip, tear through the soft skin like it was paper and they were blades. “You feel it, right?” X murmured, smirking. Blood dripped down her chin. She ran a finger across Kali’s lip gently, the pain spreading where her skin met Kali’s. “It feels just like him, right? He tore you apart, right, like I’m tearing myself apart? It hurts, right, it hurts… You think you could ever hurt yourself the way I’m hurting you right now?” Her voice faded into nothing, her smile fading.

“Why can’t we be the same?” Kali asked, staring into X’s eyes  and seeing herself reflected.

“Because you’re not strong enough.” X smiled wanly and wrapped her arms around herself. “If you were strong enough, you wouldn’t have allowed this to happen. You thought you could take it, didn’t you? Thought you could let him rape you over and over and over again until he got bored? That it was no different than taking the weird customers? Because you like it, don’t you? It was all the same, but better for you because he stripped it of intimacy and still gave you the warmth you wanted. But you wanted control, too, so you picked up Mr. Ren because you wanted someone with so much authority over your meaningless existence to be at your mercy. You hate him, though, so he wears his mask and all you can feel is his warmth when he touches you, but never fucks you.

“Why _do_ you do it like that, Kali? It isn’t a fetish. You’re not deriving pleasure from the lack of intimacy, not sexual, at least. And you’re never really in the moment when you fuck and you never really want to fuck. I’m the one who fucks because it feels good and you’re the one who fucks because you have to. Do you feel you have to? Doesn’t our body get enough from my using it?” X paused and waited for a response from Kali.

“I don’t know what you’re talking ab-!” Kali began to shout.

     “There you are again, pushing the thoughts onto me. The second you’re uncomfortable with the truth, you turn it into my truth. Lock yourself away and tell yourself it’s fine because X did it, because X wanted it. I’m just your excuse, Kali. Just your excuse. Kali, do you remember how I came to be? How you thought up your precious excuse that was good enough to deserve a name?”

* * *

_Mother is tired._

Since Kali was four, she’d heard the same excuse whenever she chased after her mother. At age six, her mother was still very much of a mystery to her, more so than her father whom she rarely saw outside of the rare instances in which she woke with soaked sheets stinking of urine and stumbled her way through the house that seemed far too grand to find her nanny only to find her father sitting in his study, a cup of coffee, black, at his side and a large book in his hands.

At age six, all she knew of her parents was that her father was important and her mother was not. Father, whose hair was not yet entirely gray and whose face was never particularly kind, was the one everyone came to visit. Rarely, did anyone ever ask for her mother’s company. Though the nanny always spoke kindly enough of her mother between her harsh words. She always asked Kali what her mother would think if she saw Kali mess up in whatever way she had. And Kali did not know.

Alina. It was a name Kali knew to belong to her mother from the one time she’d seen her parents speak kindly to each other. Her father said it, addressing her mother with barely hidden amusement. Kali could never remember what he was so amused by, only that he appeared in the entrance of the library and his eyes were not as stern as they could be and her mother’s laughter was not as quiet as it could be.

 _Mother is tired_.

Kali _knew_ that, but she didn’t know who Mother was. Mother was Alina. Mother was tired. Mother was not smiling. Mother was not moving. Mother did not want to be called Mother. Thus she didn’t want to be a mother, specifically, she didn’t want to be _Kali_ ’s mother. So she did not want Kali and she was tired. Mother was tired. Mother was always tired. That was the situation Kali thought she knew and her mother was a mystery to her and always tired.

Alina’s birthday arrived toward the end of summer on the most melancholy day every year, Kali thought at age six though she did not know the word melancholy. But she knew the word sad and her mother’s birthday was always a sad day. Especially her last birthday, happy in its sadness. Kali sat beside the door of her mother’s bedroom, across and down the hall from her father’s. She had been waiting there since she woke.

As  noon approached with the flurry of feet moving from one end of the house to the other, Kali heard the door creak open a crack. Alina hesitated, her eye to the crack, a green orb floating in the shadow of the sliver of space between the door and its frame. Behind her, the shadow of her room with the curtains drawn and lights off pressed against her back. Her hand tightened on the knob, unsure of whether to push or pull. And then her eye fell upon Kali, the living embodiment of a sad existence. A warmth spread through her chest as her throat tightened at the sight of her daughter, who cruelly resembled her.

The door swung open suddenly, startling Kali. Her wide, green eyes swiveled in their sockets to meet their twins. It had been months since she’d last seen her mother. This tall woman in her long black skirt and her beautiful eyes rimmed in red and shockingly red lips was Alina who was always tired who was Mother and Kali loved her in that blind, foolish way that children love their parents. Even when their parents don’t love them. At that moment on her mother’s last birthday on that melancholy day, Kali did not know what to call her mother because she could not call Mother.

“Did your nanny send you?” Alina asked, suspicious.

Kali shook her head.

“Did your father send you?”

Kali shook her head.

“Why are you here?” Alina demanded, forgetting for a moment that she was speaking to a child.

“I was waiting for you,” Kali answered, her voice thick with the threat of tears.

Alina knelt beside the girl and cradled her round cheeks in her cold hands. What she would have given to be young and naive to the cruelties of the world. Those eyes, so like her own, were so filled with warmth and innocence like Kali didn’t quite know yet that the world was already hurting her. Alina was a young mother who didn’t love her child or its father, but there was nothing to be done about it. She was tired again and her eyes blurred with tears.

Kali touched her mother’s hand, her small fingers lingering a moment on the woman’s wrist. For a moment, they stayed like that with Kali sitting and Alina kneeling. Kali couldn’t help but think that her mother had a very sad face. At age six, on her mother’s birthday, Kali began to unravel the mystery of Mother who she saw rarely, but not less often than she saw her father who she knew nearly nothing of. And, of course, Father was important and Mother was not. But it was Mother whose hand she touched, not Father’s, and so, to her, Mother was important and Father was not.

Alina pulled Kali into her arms and held her tightly, as if afraid Kali might disappear if she loosened her hold even slightly. Slowly, she lifted herself up until she stood tall with Kali on her hip and her eyes not truly focused on anything in particular. As she walked, she spoke quietly to Kali. Her voice flowed smoothly over the rhythm of her heart, that Kali could hear beating with her head on Alina’s chest, and the sound of her bare feet on the warm floorboards. “It’s my birthday, Kali. I met your father on my birthday.

“I was working in a bar at the time. You don’t know what a bar is yet, Kali, but you don’t have to. It was a slow day and my boss had bought me a cake to celebrate. I could only think about that cake, how it would taste, how I would cut it, who I would share it with. I used to be excited about my birthdays before you came along. The sun was setting when I took my break and your father was there, standing outside of the bar like he couldn’t decide whether or not he would go in and have a drink. He was almost 40. Handsome, tall and dark and he looked like he had money and I needed money. He asked me my name and asked me if I’d come back to his place. I accepted.”

Alina smiled and waved as she entered the dining area where her husband sat with a woman close to her age, his hand curling around her hand. If she was hurt, she didn’t show it, but he still dropped the other woman’s hand as if he’d been caught in the act, as if he already knew what she was thinking. Alina stroked Kali’s cheek and giggled. “Here I am, meeting your father on my birthday again,” she whispered.

“Are they your daughters?” asked the woman at the table, blushing. She, along with everyone else in town, had heard of the odd relationships within the Felian household. The old embalmer married to a young, beautiful woman who’d fallen pregnant some time ago with the troublesome Kali. The woman smiled politely and glanced at Kali who still did not know what to call her mother and was recovering from the shock of seeing her father in daylight.

“I’m his wife, if you call what we’re doing marriage… And this is his daughter, Kali,” Alina said. Her smile faltered and fell when she glanced at the child in her arms. “She looks like me, doesn’t she?” she murmured, lowering Kali to the floor. “You married me for this, right? Well, you got it. You got your fucking kid and you stole my fucking life. This was your plan, wasn’t it? Trap me, marry me, fuck me over?! I don’t even fucking _know_ this kid and neither do you! I hate you and I want to love her because she came from _me_ , but she also came from _you_!”

At age six, Kali saw her mother who she couldn’t call Mother admit that she didn’t love her only child. A age six, Kali no longer wanted to be Kali.

* * *

At age nine on what would have been her mother’s birthday, Kali met a boy on her walk home from school. But before that, she met X.

X was waiting for her in an alley. Prettier, stronger, wiser, X met Kali with a boy’s hand under her skirt. A child who did not yet understand such actions or why a boy older than her would want to do anything of the sort with her. All she knew was that he was right because he was older and, therefore, wiser. X didn’t have to close her eyes to not feel a thing unlike Kali. X could look the boy straight in his eyes and tell him she wanted him to stop because she was unafraid and unlike Kali.

Kali, though, closed her eyes and whimpered when his fingers bumped against that place that she was nearly sure no one was meant to touch. When the boy, an older brother of a friend, clamped his hand over her mouth and used the other to guide her own smaller hand to where he wanted it, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks and knew that X would wipe them away. So she sat perfectly still and listened to X berate the boy in her head and imagined that she was somewhere else where the seconds did not tick away so slowly.

He appeared in the alley, seemingly out of nowhere, but more likely on his way from his own school. Kylo was too tall for his age and thin. Filled with fifteen years worth of repressed rage, Kali’s situation was simply a convenient release. Had anyone in the moment been thinking clearly, they would have wondered what a lanky teen in an expensive uniform was doing lurking in an alley, carrying an old bat. But, no one could think clearly or practically in the haze of pubescent lust fueled crime and childish disassociation. And so it was that Kylo brought his bat down on the boy’s back with a sickening crunch. The rest was a blur of blood and cries that ended with a girl and a boy walking away from the scene of the crime.

From that moment on, it could be said that X loved Kylo though she was only minutes old (in a sense) and did not yet understand love. Kylo would not grow to develop an interest in the girl for a few years and, even then, it was a strained sort of interest in which he desired her for the sake of desiring her. In the moment, however, he regarded the small girl with a deep disdain as she insisted on trailing after him, never pausing in her questions to breathe.

“How old are you?”

“Old.”

“What school do you go to?”

“A school.”

“What’s your name?”

Kylo spat out a name too quickly for X to understand. He glanced back at her, checking to be sure she hadn’t heard before correcting himself. “Mr. Ren to you, kid,” he muttered. He kicked an empty glass bottle down the sidewalk. It rolled away, clinking loudly. With a jarring crash, it split apart from the impact of its collision with the wall. Stepping on the shattered pieces, her groaned and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Why’d you break that bottle?”

“Because I fucking could.”

“You shouldn’t swear.”

“You shouldn’t follow strange boys,” Kylo snapped. A frown tugged at the corners of his lips and he furrowed his brow. Swiping away the sweat gathering at the edges of his hairline, he exhaled heavily and narrowed his eyes.  His own head was filled with a number of questions, questions that overwhelmed and underwhelmed him in a single motion.

 


	13. Iniquity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Father's side of the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incest, implied rape, underage stuff for this chapter. It's not extremely dark, but it's not a bunch of roses without the thorns if you catch my drift

“It’s not my place to give away the girls’ personal information, sir. They’ve had more than a few _incidents_ and I want nothing more than to avoid such at any cost,” the old man muttered, bored with his own words as if he’d delivered them too many times and repeating them had become a tedious action. The sound of keys clanking against each other filled the alley. He peered at the tall man dressed entirely in black fabrics over the wiry frames his glasses, shoving the ring of keys into his pocket. The old man licked his fingers and ran them across the top of his spotted head, slicking back the strands of gray hair.

“I need to see her,” Kylo snapped. He clenched his jaw and glared down at the geezer before him. Who did he think he was, anyway, this sack of bones in a suit nearly devoured by moths? Didn’t he know that Kylo could break him without a second thought? Such blatant ignorance sent the volatile man’s thoughts into a frenzy, but, behind his mask, he maintained an impassive expression. Kylo’s blood ripped through his body, burning and frothing with the passion of a rabid predator ready to strike with the slightest excuse of a trigger to set him off. “She’s my fiancee,” he said, voice bordering on pleading beneath the layer of demanding gruffness intrinsic to his persona, a carefully employed wounded tone resonating with the old man.

“Does she know she’s engaged or are you the only informed party?” the old man mused, chuckling.

“It’s an unspoken agreement.” Kylo nearly spat the words out, without a care for how they’d be received. He inhaled slowly, stared at the man through his mask, and forced himself to relax. Rebels never yielded to outsiders who yelled, a fact he’d picked up on early in his crusade. Hell, they barely listened to each other if they yelled with enough passion and they only ever yelled with so much passion until it all started to all sound the same, all of these raised and passionate voice ripping through the air with the force of the whisper of feathers falling on aged ears. Kylo vaguely remembered a time when a place like this had been a dreamland rather than a hole of human desolation and mistake where people with heads full of hope went to extinguish their own flames, a time when his voice rang with the same blind passion. The only desirable aspect of it was that one could do whatever they wanted, could indulge in any activity short of murder without anyone telling them to stray from their means of pleasure. They were almost praised for acknowledging their disgusting releases.

The old man froze. And then, slowly, a frown etched itself into his face and his eyes closed. He felt an overwhelming power radiate off of the young man and warm his own skin with scalding tongues of flaming intensity. In his voice, the all too familiar ambitious growl of one better suited for torn flesh and blood, flowing fresh, beneath their knuckles than important documents and expensive linens. “The women here don’t like those sorts of arrangements, Mr…” He paused for Kylo to respond, but continued on when the silence grew too long and Kylo failed to acknowledge he’d been prompted. “You seem to be, ah, how should I put it… Filled with rage, like a caged animal who’s been watching all of the other animals run wild. Deprived of freedom, I’d say.” _Easily depraved._ The old man chuckled to himself as his eyes darted from either end of the alley and he leaned closer to the towering young man. Dropping his voice, he spoke with a faux nonchalance, “I have a fix, if you’re interested.”

Kylo hesitated, mind running with the memory of similar words. Lured in by similar prompts, he’d endured their hidden costs for the sake of their final promise, slipping into perversion. Something to channel all of his ambition into, the world to rule, an endless supply of power. _If_ he followed his leader, _if_ he devoted himself to a cause. Now, he wasn’t so easily swayed, so flimsy in his holdings as he was as a teenager filled to the brim with determination and a raging thirst for control. Or, at least, he convinced himself that he no longer lacked autonomy, and led rather than followed. A lie to quiet the unease. But there was something about this man, something that screamed he possessed the true answer to all of his worries _if_ he listened, _if_ he followed. Kylo would relinquish his grip on dominance if it meant he could escape the turmoil within him, the never ending doubts clashing with his firm sincerity and certainty in his cause, and himself.

“You might find what you’re looking for,” the old man whispered. Without any warning, he spun  around with too much ease and agility for an old geezer as worn out as himself. Whistling, he snapped his fingers as he walked. “You might find what you’re looking for,” he sang, his voice cracking on the notes of his own disjointed tune. Twisting the words into eerie noises emitted through thin, dry lips without the grace to smile, cutting the air like dull blades on slippery skin, never drawing blood to prove agony, but sending pain coursing through one’s limbs in a thudding manner.

Kylo started to follow the man when a soft rustling caught his attention. As he turned his head, a figure emerged from a corner of the alley, approaching him in slow, strained strides with an air of importance and foreboding presence. He froze in place, daring the person to come any closer, to lessen the space between them when he stood so near the edge of the cliff whose abyss held blind rage and teetering sanity. In his pocket, his fingers wrapped around the worn handle of his switchblade. Eyes wandered the figure’s anatomy, planning a point of attack like the eyes of a nearly provoked and bloodthirsty heathen excuse for a beast. Blood rushed to his head, driving out all thoughts from his mind other than the repeated command to lash out and tear his assailant apart though he had yet to be accosted or verbally addressed.

With the same reasoning of a cornered animal, beaten and bloody, he stepped forward, eager to be the one in charge. His blade sank into the mass before either party knew exactly the intent of his hand, poised and ready. The growl of tearing fabric, the wet rip of skin and minor arteries and veins splitting with the intrusion of a foreign object slicing apart everything it touched. A cry rang out in the night air, muffled by the hum of a busy city, and Kylo sprang away from his victim, yanking his wrist back to free the blade from its spot in the person’s side. His breath escaped in heavy pants and he wiped his hand absently over his mask, chest heaving with the effort of breath. The scream of tires and the chirping drone of an emergency vehicle covered the noise of the victim’s uttered pleas. Near the entrance of the alley, the old man had frozen, but had yet to turn, a pendant caught on time and hanging, patiently and impatiently awaiting a push in either direction. He seemed to be listening, but such knowledge evaded Kylo in his state. A feral growl tore from his lips and he prepared to strike again when the person stumbled back, clutching their side and rambling incoherently.

“Kylo…”

He recoiled as one does from a flame, mask muffling a hiss. Wary, he lowered his gaze to the person’s face, barely concealed by a cheap mask. The scent of formaldehyde assaulted scratched his lungs when he inhaled. His knees buckled, but didn’t give and he drew in another shaky breath. What had he done? As quickly as guilt set in, he snatched the feeling from his mind and tossed it away into a box to be torn from his mind, reassuring himself that he had done no wrong, that he was free to protect himself from what he’d thought was a danger to himself. But, deep down in his mind, lingered the notion that he’d been aware of the fact that the figure, as it shuffled toward him, posed no true threat to himself and his actions were those of a malevolent creature bent on violence. Dread incurred from the sight of his ruins. Stumbling back and away from the man, he hissed, “Why are you here?”

“I feared you might do something drastic,” the man murmured. He clutched his side harshly, allowing a ragged groan to tumble from his quivering lips. Blood wet his shaking fingers, spilling over the gloved digits. In the dim light, the substance shone darkly against the leather. Shifting to hide the sight, he sighed heavily. “I had my suspicions about the girl, but I never thought you’d be the one to prove them,” he said. “To think that I wouldn’t know that my own daughter has been living among the rebels.” Father inhaled sharply and shook his head, hurrying his speech for the sake of finishing before the inevitable. “You’ll have to be the one to tell her the full truth, I suppose.”

* * *

David, a name rife with humanity, was the name belonging to the boy with too thin a frame and a shock of thick dark hair and cutting, light eyes one could not stare into without fearing they’d stumbled upon something obscene, like an animal’s carcass left to rot in the heat or a bleeding woman howling to the gods with her skirts torn or her breasts bared. The kind of name so lacking in flare that it stank of individualism in a place where the bland often rivalled the peculiar. It was the name bellowed from the bottom of lungs into the air with spite and malice.

David clenched his jaw and prepared for another lashing. Instead, his father’s hand fell short of his head, losing momentum and hesitated. The boy’s body grew stiffer than the cadaver before him as his father’s fingers tangled themselves into his hair. A single bead of sweat ran down his face, curving along his jutting cheekbones. He swallowed thickly and exhaled slowly when his father tugged lightly at the strands of hair that grew to a length just beyond his scapula, shoulder blade. He’d learned early on that keeping his hair long both softened the blows to his head and covered the marks that marred his sallow skin. The meaty fingers drew themselves threw the hair, stroking absently as his father avoided his son’s gaze.

“Like your sister,” the man murmured, all rage seeping from his visage. He forgot what he’d been about to reprimand his son for doing wrong. Now that he looked at his son, really _looked_ at his son, his eyes grew hazy as he perverted the image of his own flesh and blood. The boy didn’t look much like himself, his features mimicking the more gentle ones of his mother, effeminate. Narrow around the chin, full lips the color of the pale petals of roses they kept around to help ward off the scent of decaying bodies, long lashes that brushed across his cheekbones when he blinked, a broad nose carved to statuesque perfection, slightly arched eyebrows, and the hair… long, soft, an unbroken line of charcoal strands that fell across his thin neck. He even curved like a woman along the torso. The man wondered absently if his son felt like a woman, too.

Later on, when the only proof of his father’s experiment to remain was the sore feeling of emptiness that stemmed from a place near the end of his spine, David filled with an unabashed rage. Constructs of masculinity torn down in a matter of minutes with his father’s sweaty body, slick against his own, and his inability to move out of blinding fear that stole him from himself. Everything he’d prided his manhood in suddenly seemed infinitesimal and flimsy. Who cared if he was the tallest boy or could lift a body if he’d been made a woman by his own maker? Such thoughts couldn’t be swallowed or ignored because he was reminded of them by his own reflection, by his father’s hand clasped on his shoulder, by even the sight of a dead body and the scent of embalming fluids on his work clothes. Every lesson in embalming a body a reminder of what had come of a mistake from another. It tore at his idea of masculinity which had been largely based in a concept of unwavering control over himself and everyone else. Could he drown himself in alcohol, in athletic events, in sex, in violence, to claim that which made him a man and thus himself, David? If he wasn’t masculine and therefore, by his reasoning, not male, then he was he not himself, David? He wondered how he could reset the balance within and he sought desperately to compensate for the scar on his record.

Kaedi, his sister, cleared the battlefield with her thick, black hair and slender figure that still swelled at the accepted places and her clear skin that ran all over her body untouched. The only living being he could trust enough to consider confiding in. When David eluded himself, he struck her with all the force in his body to see the bruises blossom, violet against the golden undertones of her clear skin. If given more than a moment to think, David spiraled into the abyss of self loathing he would later grow accustomed to, and his memories grew hazy. So hazy that when he wrote down in his journal that his father had beaten him, he believed the untruth. To lend himself to a harmless lie that he knew to be untrue only because it was heavily spoken in great silences felt harmless, a fly in honey. It was when he strayed from the haze that he needed Kaedi, who he could never be sure hated the experience because she hardly ever opened her mouth to speak. He only ever found himself outside of the haze when embalming bodies and his vision filled only with the memory of lifeless limbs swaying with the motion of his body pressed against the table and jolting forward with the movement of rough hips slamming themselves to and fro without a set pace. After such sessions, he wanted nothing more than to feed his desire for dominance with his sister’s submissiveness.

David sat beside his sister one morning, entirely bare with eyes focused only on the plain white wall before him. Kaedi laid beside him, still as a corpse, staring lifelessly up at the ceiling as an old radio buzzed on from beneath her bed. For a while, she’d sensed a growing tenderness from her brother as if he seemed to say that he yearned for her now in a way that only further provoked his hatred and violent tendencies. Her eyes traced the curve of his spine, prominent against the ivory skin of his back. His hair tickled the skin, a mess of waves so early in the morning. His hand rested on her thigh, tracing small circles on the skin just above her bony knee. He hardly noticed when she pulled her legs fully onto the bed and moved to sit behind him. They heard their father stir in the kitchen, her mother shuffle around in her bedroom. Kaedi embraced her brother’s back, breast pressed flush against his cold skin as if she planned to copy the mold of his form.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, overwhelmed by the sudden contact initiated by her. Somewhere in the mess of his stumbling recovery, he taught himself to gaze upon his sister as one might gaze upon a lover. Though, morally, the concept itself didn’t bother him, a series of laws forbade him from further acting upon such sinful thoughts. It was one thing to slip into her in the midst of rage-induced battery, another to seek intimacy and publicly announce the relationship as it transcended the boundaries of blood. But it was the only way he truly knew how to express that he trusted her on such an intimate level. If there was someone who might suspect his truth, it was his dear Kaedi. A toxic dependency sprouted from his relief, morphing it into something more sinister than he cared to acknowledge. It was too much to live with, something no one was capable of moving past mentally or physically. To desire one’s own blood relative in a lustful way. It was already decided with his apology that the arrangement would cease. When he took a blade to his locks that had once cushioned his father’s blows, he announced a new era to his life. A new epoch in which his sister could no longer be his sole comfort and love.

David’s father touched him because David hung somewhere between the aesthetically divided binary of male and female, slipping into alluring androgyny, because he resembled his sister who was by all means untouchable so long as her mother slept in the same bed, in the same house. David touched Kaedi because it allowed him to slip back into one division of sex and the construct of masculinity upheld by frequenting the skirts of the fair sex whilst laying claim through violence. Thus, through touching her, he built himself into a man. Or, at least, that had been the initial excuse, but somewhere he’d fallen into the abyss of devotion to one’s heart and body and found that he craved his sister even after it became quite clear that he could never quite have her. So for years he would stumble through life searching for a mockery of her to fulfill his desires, to feign intimacy on both the sexual and familial level, with people who looked like her. Olive skin, light eyes, dark hair, a lack of desire to free one’s self of the role of the victim.

He thought he’d found sweet Kaedi in Alina, but Alina had no intentions of clinging to him. Which made him want to dominate her all the more. This young thing of dreams who always smelled faintly of cigarettes and someone else’s bed and only wanted him for his money didn’t replace Kaedi, but gave him something new, something less forbidden to strive for in his crusade to prove himself to himself. Young flesh with the sole purpose of breaking hearts. But that faded quickly when Alina fell pregnant. He found, quite to his surprise, that he no longer desired women outside of Kaedi as he watched his lovely young lover swell with the weight of his unborn. If he could raise a child correctly, a son, then he could achieve the title of man which he still sought after as he passed into the years marked by the term “middle-aged”. The affairs stopped with the announcement of her pregnancy and he hurriedly married Alina, effectively trapping her in wealth.

But Kali was born without a penis and, as if that wasn’t criminal enough, each year she grew to love her mother more and reject her father’s attempts at parenthood (few and far apart as they were). It surprised him, how much he hated his own child. So he dove once more into brothels and women and the underground scene where promiscuity was encouraged with prostitutes because divorce was a terrible crime to commit under a rising empire that sought to extinguish individuality and sentience. David contemplated suicide only once in his life and it was on the day he watched his wife leave and knew she wouldn’t return. It was because he would have to raise the child, the wretched thing without the sense to be born a boy. He despised women for the simple fact that their degradation was socially accepted, that their reactions to pain and trauma were normal and his, as man halfway through his own timeline, were not. And he’d been robbed of a vessel of masculinity. Though the story around town was that he found Kali’s mother for the sake of continuing the Felian bloodline, he knew that he’d found her for the sake of his manhood and his inability to accept his own past which he’d successfully worn down to nothing but a single line of thought which he couldn’t be sure was true or not because no one ever discussed it.

Kali was saved by her crippling anxiety over death. She grasped the concept at younger age than himself and, once her mother left, had been forced to confront her fear every day of her childhood when David insisted that she learn how to properly embalm a body. He’d lay his hand over hers and force her to hold her hand against the still chest of a corpse as he told her about death, how there was nothing beyond the last beat of her heart. Once she died, she would be stuck in a sempiternal void. It was an idea drilled into her tiny head, that death was permanent and inevitable. She thought of it every night before bed, her heart leaping into her throat and her eyes wide and dry in the darkness as she imagined what it might feel like, that stretching space of time in which she would not exist. It was deeply ingrained in her that the bodies she touched felt nothing and she wanted with all of her childish might to always feel _something_ because of it. Though she grew comfortable in the presence of death, she could never grow comfortable with the concept itself.

The second thing that saved her was the fact that she was the one to bring Kylo Ren home. David never learned the full story of how, never cared to. He only cared that this wretched female had brought home a gorgeous specimen of a boy with dark hair and pale skin and eyes shining with a terrifying determination and lust for violence. David prided himself Kylo and the notion that this boy, who he learned to be well regarded in a terms of strength and intelligence, might one day marry into his family and he could claim a textbook definition of the word man as his own son. Imagine that! Kylo Ren, intelligent, formidable opponent, a devoted and successful leader, marrying his own flesh and blood and becoming his own flesh and blood. That wasn’t the only pleasure he found in it, though. No, he saw Kaedi in Kali and David in Kylo. Essentially, marrying his children was his way of finally obtaining his final comfort without any pain.

* * *

Kylo allowed the story to settle on his ears, its wings still rustling in the vibrations of vocal cords. His shoulders sagged slightly as the words worked their way through his mind, poisoning his thoughts with an array of emotions he wasn’t sure how to deal with. He pushed them down, away from his consciousness until only the facts remained. He was nothing more than a pawn, a dummy turned dream. His own goals weren’t his own, but belonged to Father who had carefully planned out Kylo’s life from the moment of their meeting. If not for his mask, the slight jerk in his features wouldn’t have gone unseen even with his face shrouded in shadow. A slight slip, his eyes dulled and face slackened, jaw hanging dumbly.

“Kali is recovering,” Father murmured. But Kylo didn’t care to hear about Kali when he’d just been told that the entire portion of his life he’d just spent agonizing over with her disappearance wasn’t necessarily important to him. He didn’t benefit or not benefit from it either way fate wrote itself. If he married Kali, the public wouldn’t care because, by that point in time, they would be conditioned not to care. They couldn’t be bothered to care about their own relationships which were for the most part arranged by government officials to ensure that not a living person loyal to the First Order ever fell in love. No, they needed to be entirely devoted and loyal to the cause, not each other. It was a criminal offense to be caught in an intimate relationship for personal reasons. People were only ever meant to  engage each other to procreate and any memory could be accessed with only a small amount of focus on Kylo Ren’s part. He could easily find someone to breed and marry and claim without the hindrance of altruism affecting him and clouding his judgement. Father had ruined that by making Kali out to be some sort of prize for his own benefit.

“You think you can just manipulate my life and I’ll repay you by fulfilling your dying wish? Do you honestly believe I’ll lend myself to such a cause? I am not your puppet, you necrophiliac bastard. I will not marry your daughter as a way of making amends for the fact that you are disgustingly infatuated with your own sibling,” Kylo growled. He turned to the old man who stood as he had since Kylo attacked Father. Preparing to speak, words evaded him until he simply stood and stared at the man, waiting for acknowledgement.

“You seem bothered. I know a way to blow of steam,” the old man sang. He flashed his yellowing teeth and nodded toward the young man. It was a place beneath the city, a few miles east of First Order HQ, situated in an old dungeon that had survived the ruin. A relatively small distance from Kali’s establishment where people knew her in several senses by the name X. It was a place people went to to shed their humanity, release pent up rage, or restore justice to the underground society. Though the show brought a mixed crowd of officers and rebels, no one stopped to consider engaging each other. Only underground could people mix so freely, especially in the center of crime where women not selling themselves were regularly ravished and people became victims of paraphilia. But not a word flew of discontent so long as two people met on the stage to tear each other apart. Whether or not death reared its pale head, the sight engaged people in a show of raw human rage. And anyone could see that Kylo bled rage.

Kylo vaguely remembered a place such as the one he entered. Row after row seats extended from the center, around the circular stage. From the balconies, molded from weathered old stone and smelling faintly of perspiration and the metallic odor of blood, people watched, the more engaged hanging precariously over the rails with gaping mouths and narrowed eyes. On one side, the sound of flesh on flesh and shrieks. On the other, an unnerving silence and the heavy feeling of thousands of eyes all turned on one sight, watching without reaction until the end. The old man had disappeared without any warning, leaving Kylo to observe the scene before him with wide eyes hidden behind his mask. It was barbaric. A man and woman stood at the center of the stage, ripping at each other’s clothes and skin with crazed eyes. Kylo sensed, though the two looked far from ready to stop, that the show was quickly nearing its close. He tensed and regarded the stage with strained curiosity until, without any warning or explanation, the two fell away from each other and turned toward opposite ends of the stage.

The old man shuffled onto the stage, head bobbing with delight. He came to a stop at the center of the stage, white head like the center of a target on a wheel. Gesturing feebly toward the opponents, he nodded his head. Instantly, as if pushed into a reaction, the crowd erupted in unadulterated chaos. A deafening cacophony of noise of praise for something that slipped beyond Kylo’s realm of perception. He couldn’t, for the life of him, lay a finger on exactly what he’d just witnessed or how it had anything to do with finding out more about Kali or releasing his own rage. A cold hand wrapped around his wrist.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I reread this chapter and for the record /I/ don't think that genitalia decides gender. And i also feel really bad that the first time i wrote of homosexuality (that seems stiff, the phrasing) it was in a terrible light and yeah i do understand that some of the stuff in this chapter was problematic.


	14. It All Disappears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> where Kali's been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't even plan on writing a chapter like this, but i figured it would be better than just summarizing also sorry for the wait

Her eyes watered beneath the heavy light and she blinked slowly as if waking from a dream through which she’d lived a kind reality. Like shackles, she felt the leather restraints wrapped tightly around her wrists and ankles. A muffled noise of surprise escaped her lips and she flinched away from the face that suddenly filled her vision, granting temporary relief from the bright light held over her. The feeling of being invaded by something hung heavily over her mind, dulled by the drape of fog that dulled her reactions by only the slightest bit and then, as if someone had spoken the words to her, she knew without a doubt that she needed to escape. But she could not move more than to tilt her head and blink stupidly as the person above her spoke.

Eyes the color of snow as seen through windows as the day gave way to night, icy pools, assessed her movement. A few pale strands of hair fell forward onto a forehead wrinkled by the effort of concentration. His voice was unnerving in its calamity as he spoke with his fingers on her chin to keep her gaze on his face.

“Are you afraid?” he asked. The light shifted behind his head and another man’s face appeared briefly as he held a syringe up to the light.

“No,” Kali lied.

“Alright. We’ll try again, this time with an injection and I advise you to be honest.”

She wanted to writhe as she felt the needle jammed into her arm rather unceremoniously. Her mouth had just opened to bring forth a cry when she felt what could only be described as someone picking through the fog of her mind, clearing the mess, and leaving everything out to be examined.

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“Are you aware of the events that led up to you being here?”

Her mind was blank as she shook her head, eyes burning while her vision blurred. She _knew_ , but she couldn’t bring to mind the exact events, only the jumble of emotions and sensations.

“You claim to have been raped, but that isn’t true. You engaged in illegal activities with a First Order official in order to collect information for the Resistance. You betrayed your government and lied to continue working with the Resistance,” the man said, his words slipping from his lips too quickly.

Kali shook her head again.

“How do you know it’s a lie? Do you remember anything?”

“I remember… I remember…” Blank again.

“Why would I lie to you, Miss Felian? My job is to treat your affliction.”

She was silent. One of the most repeated doctrines of the First Order was one which demanded complete and total honesty from peers in order to maintain equality in a system.

“When did you begin to question your loyalty?”

“I was young. It was after I met Kylo. Fourteen, fifteen,” she murmured. Kali hated herself for speaking, but couldn’t stop and answered every question thrown her way with enough honesty to make her want to break her own teeth with a hammer.

It had occurred in a crowded hospital while her father made arrangements to have the dead sent to his office. He’d told her to go look at true misery after she’d expressed an overwhelming disdain for his business and the basis of it, leaving her to wait patiently in the waiting room. The walls were nearly bare save for the posters urging men to join the force and fight for equality. As she stared at one of the posters depicting a man dressed in black, she became aware of the slow footsteps of someone approaching.

A young man sat beside her and his companion, a man bleeding profusely from the forehead, sat beside him. He, too, stared at the poster that captured her attention and then he began to weep. The tears that rolled down his cheeks in fat, clear drops drew her reluctant attention and, try as she may, Kali watched him with little remorse after a while. His companion adopted an expression she could only assess as curious terror that seemed both determined to escape and too intrigued to leave.

“Why are you crying, sir?” she asked.

“Because we fight and die for nothing if we remain loyal to the First Order.”

“We fight and die for equality,” she replied, the same words she’d heard since she could remember comprehending words.

“ _Equality_?” The man glared at the girl beside him, revealing a face half claimed by flames. “Do you honestly trust that agenda? You, a child, have not lived long enough to have been tainted. I was _born_ into the force, raised from birth to defend our pride, and I can say without shame that the Order is a hypocritical gathering headed by a tyrant who orders the brainwashing of his soldiers to the point where loyalty to anything other than the First Order is something unheard of.

“I watched my own brother die today and for the first time in my life felt that perhaps a life has more worth to it than I thought. Equality, you think we fight for? While our leaders sit in castle and dine on the finest of wines, citizens suffer in poverty with their minds dulled down to droning slabs of meat devoted to a cause not devoted to their safety. Equality! Equality exists in portions where the rich are equal to rich and the poor are equal to the poor and even I am not equal to you, girl,” he growled. “I saw my brother die, and felt less remorse than I felt slightly agitated.”

Kali didn’t know what to say.

“If the First Order is so great, why must we eradicate entire populations, murder infants who have yet to leave their mothers’ breasts, to push an agenda so pure? Are we not the cruel villains who laugh in the face of justice? I have to ask myself this because I’ve shot pregnant women with as little care as I’ve shot people trying to kill me. If the First Order is so great, why is it that no one from the opposite side joins us and, yet, so many of us betray our loyalties?” The man’s eyes were intense and he’d grabbed Kali’s shoulder as he spoke.

She hadn’t considered his words once she broke free of his grip to seek her father, but they hit her with the sickly sweet scent of rotting flesh beneath the cover of cleaning products and the sight of blackened stumps where limbs had been, and the eyes of enemies torn from their sockets in the pursuit of information.

As quickly as the memory settled, it dissipated and only moments later Kali couldn’t find it beneath the stinging at her temples. She felt something hard on either side of her face with wires protruding. The weight of impending unconsciousness slowed her breaths as a radio came to life, the voice of Kylo Ren filling the space of her mind as he reminded her what the First Order stood for and the absolute necessity of pledging loyalty to it.

In her sleep, his voice played the soundtrack to her dreams, tainting every moment of memory and erasing every bit of dialogue that accompanied her scenes. She began to hear the icy eyed man’s voice as she relived the moment in which she surrendered to the wonders of eroticism in freedom.

“Sex is an unnecessary crime.”

Pink lips moved invitingly and strong hands helped her out of her clothing. A mask was lifted to her face and she felt, in the haze of inebriation, fingers trail down her sex and saw money placed before her. She felt her lips turn up into a smile as her first customer took her before the watchful eyes of the owner and the dark haired woman who had invited her into the establishment with her bare breasts heaving beneath the weight of heavily jeweled necklaces around her thin throat. She could not hear, but felt her breath quicken and her vocal cords vibrate. In her pleasure, she was disgusted by her wanton actions.

“The only relationship one requires is an all-consuming devotion to the First Order.”

Kali remembered a lover carved from obsidian with red lips and white hair the curled into the air in tight coils that one could hardly run their fingers through without tangling them. She saw her hands on swelling hips, felt warm dark skin beneath her lips, and her heart hammered in her chest with the remnants of a childish infatuation colored by adoration so pure she compared it to that of a child to their hero. She’d made a deity of a human. She was a precious young fool overcome by her first love. She remembered people with long, white fingers and dark eyes that she’d thought of incessantly at points in her life and the words repeated themselves, driving all affection from her heart.

“All you know is the First Order and its greatness.”

Repetitive lashes administered by a gnarled old man who on occasion would run his old fingers harshly up her shirt as he bent over her. Her skin stung whenever his ruler returned to it and she read the writing on the board that preached the greatness of their leader. His fingers had held her small breasts, developing, with nothing between them but the thin fabric of her bra. A punishment through which he released years of sexual repression. There was a recruitment poster on the wall that she watched as he berated her. And then Kali could no longer remember the scene.

When she woke, Kali could bring little to mind under the frozen gaze of her captor but the way Kylo’s eyes had shone the very first time he kissed her following their agreement and knew nothing could make her forget that haunting gaze. And then she promptly forgot their agreement and the feel of his hands on her that first night they spent together and how he had seemed somewhat restrained.

* * *

“How do you feel, Kali?” Kylo asked, eyes burning into the back of her neck left bare with her hair tied up.

“I don’t feel anything,” she replied, calmly, smoothly. A bold-faced lie left the room colder than usual. Her mind was a maze of walls before memories she knew she had, but could not recall their subjects since she’d left the treatment facility and those cold blue eyes that had left her feeling violated when she closed her eyes and they danced behind her eyelids. From her journal, she knew that she was loyal to the Resistance, but the notion seemed childish in motion when she considered the chaos the Resistance desired.

Father’s body had been cold before her, his skin sallow and tight on his body. As she washed her hands, she tried not to glance back at it or Kylo, though she felt nothing when she regarded the corpse that had been her father now filled with embalming fluid and rotting eyes. The eyes always went quickly. She couldn’t bring herself to question the cause of death whenever she glanced at the rotting flesh around a mortal wound.

Kylo lifted his cigarette to his lips and wondered how he could approach the topic of her disappearance. He’d heard her excuse, but tossed it away as little more than an imaginative tale made up to save the face of officers. He considered telling her about his newfound passion in her scene, about the beautiful people who praised him regularly. The memory of a stranger’s blood on his skin sent a shiver racing down his spine and he fought to keep his composure. Instead of mentioning what weighed on his mind, he said, “I’d like to meet X tonight.”

Kali froze with her hands against one of the walls in her mind. _X_. She couldn’t place a face to the letter and turned to Kylo, confused. The information seemed so near to her, so very close to her thoughts that she could feel its breath, but nothing came. “X?” Her genuine confusion nearly made Kylo drop his cigarette.

“So they administered the erasure treatment,” he murmured. He tilted his head and frowned at her. “What would you do if I said I love you?”

“I’d say Father would be pleased.”


	15. Return to the Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops guess who strayed entirely from the original plan that's right: me, the idiot. I'll try to make the last chapter worthwhile.

Kali had decided to take a walk, slipping out as the sun rose and shed its light upon the gleaming surfaces of buildings reaching up into the sky. It wasn’t something she knew herself or anyone else to do very often. To walk meant to think and to walk often meant to think often, something the First Order was working quickly to end, quiet like a screaming child on a crowded street: all independent thought. At any rate, simply considering walking indicated some exercising of free will and, with the way the First Order had begun to sink its teeth into dissenters in the last decade, such was always viewed as the predecessor of all crime. Thus Kali couldn’t help but think that she was on the edge of performing some heinous act if she hadn’t already and hastened to return to her home, feeling that she was evading something of high importance. Noon was beckoning by the time Kali reached a level of apprehension so strong she couldn’t continue on in false calamity.

“Where are you going?”

Kali had entered a dream-like state of panic and her breath hitched as a tall man seemed to materialize before her. She stared at his chest, thinking only of her need to return to where she belonged instead of wasting time walking aimlessly. Her hands shook as dread claimed her mind bit by bit with a sinking feeling in her chest. Slowly, she rolled her eyes to meet the gaze of the man, all the while forcing herself to breathe. While she wanted to run immediately, she was paralyzed by an inexplicable terror.

"Where are you going?” Hux repeated himself. Never one to skirt around topics, he asked, “Do you remember accusing me of rape?”

“It was only an accusation,” Kali replied, sure of her words, but afraid of the man before her.

“So you admit that you approached me...”

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I was on my way home when I noticed you ambling like a dazed fool.” For his own representation, he added, “Being the empathetic person that I am, I took pity in your obvious distress. You know how fools can be in distress.”

Kali tilted her head, glancing down the street, toward the towering building they inhabited. If she could get around him, she knew she could find safety. Her skin itched beneath the roaming fingers of his gaze and she felt bile rise in her throat while her heart seemed ready to plunge through her diaphragm.

“I’m not a fool.”

Hux stared at the young woman for what felt like an eternity, his mind racing with too many thoughts to cling to. Guilt made his stomach turn every time she shifted and her collar pulled away from her skin enough for him to see the nearly faded reminders of his crime. He wasn’t a terrible person, he thought, and most definitely not a criminal, but something about her ignorance left him reconsidering himself, his morals, and his actions. There he was, so very near claiming control, and he’d risked his career to punish her for sleeping with a man she was already promised to, a man who was both his comrade and rival. He’d heard of officers attacking trainees, heard of careers disappearing with their holders, and, yet, he’d done something so foolish. What would his father have said if his prodigal son, his accidental son, had disappointed him in such a way? What would the First Order have done without his careful lead? The thought broke him and he closed his eyes, flushing her out of his vision.

“How are you?” he asked, suddenly overcome by a desire to know she’d recovered completely.

“I,” she began only to cut herself, wondering if she could confide freely in him. “My body has recovered almost completely and I’ve resumed my work.” There was a fleeting softness in his eyes that didn’t seem to be truly seeing her that forced her to bite her tongue to keep from saying anything else.

“What about your father?”

“What of him?”

“Are you grieving?”

A memory so clear she couldn’t be sure it was a product of reality. Shown with the clarity of a vivid dream colored by lurid hues, a scene played out before her eyes the length of a breath. A single action, a single movement no longer than the familiar eyes whose glance she was sure had lingered too long on her form. As she felt herself fading out of the memory of a single hand on her thigh and eyes she could trust, another pulled her in just as clear as the other, almost too realistic. Even in the darkness, her blanket was a shock of crimson beneath her form. Her face was turned to the door, her hair over her eyes, and she couldn’t move, could only see her father’s face as he watched through the door left ajar. She heard a few soft pants, a strangled groan, and felt smooth fingers tug her gown up over her hips. She was supposed to be asleep, she knew, and she didn’t particularly like what was happening, but she’d been too tired, too nonchalant, to tell her company that she was awake and knew. She felt fingers slip beneath her underwear and then she was standing on the street again, only a few buildings away from home.

“He was murdered,” Kali murmured. “I don’t feel anything when I think of him.” It was a slight lie; she felt sick when she thought of her father.

Hux didn’t move to stop Kali when she walked around him, but turned his head slightly to watch her out of the corner of his eye, unsure of how to regard her words. He froze where he stood, wondering just how thorough her treatment had been. It didn’t matter to him as long as she forgot everything about him, as long as he could be innocent in her mind even with her body remembering him and responding to him with a stiffness one could not coax from the memory of muscles with drugs and therapy. But what he would give for her to welcome him once more in her room. He would give the world if it meant he could finish things on a kinder note that wouldn’t bruise his ego so, if he could take her one more time without her reminding him of her promise to Kylo Ren, if he could win without having to steal the golden cup. All he could do, from that moment on, was watch her succumb to the inevitable.

One day, he thought as her figure grew small with distance, she’d marry the vain bastard of the First Order. And she would learn that the secret to his greatness was the fact that he had some training where most had none. But in a larger pool filled with true talent, he was but a small man capable of only so much greatness alone. She would learn true unhappiness beneath Kylo Ren and if she ever remembered what Hux had done, he convinced himself she would prefer his treatment of her to whatever Kylo Ren could offer as the spoiled child of a revolution.

Kali was met with the sight of Kylo Ren flipping absently through the pages of her journal as she entered her room. When he offered no greeting or acknowledgement of her presence, she cleared her throat.

“You haven’t packed your things,” Kylo said, bypassing any formality or apology for invading her privacy.

“I don’t need anything. I’m moving into the apartment,” she replied, holding her hand out for the leather-bound book.

“What will you do with your inheritance?"

“I’m going to finish my studies and then I’m going to travel.” She looked up at Kylo with a clear loathing in her eyes, noting bitterly that he’d been left a greater portion of her father’s wealth than her and refused to buy the home she’d grown up in to spare her the trouble of moving.

“You don’t plan to continue embalming.” If it was a question, it wasn’t asked.

“I never planned to. I’ve always hated it.”

Her skin crawled at the memories of her father forcing her to lay her small hands upon dead bodies, always reminding her in a saccharine voice that there was nothing going on in that still chest and that there was nothing to await after death. She wondered if he was pleased in the void or, if there was something to follow death, if he had hovered around her with sad eyes as she cut him open and sewed him shut and bathed his body, removing his blood and then replacing him with a dyed fluid to bring color to his cheeks. His was the only body that hadn’t left her terrified as she considered death. There was a certain satisfaction in seeing the maker of her fear dead, though her fear lived on.

“I don’t love you.”

“Well, now you won’t be forced to marry me.”

“I’ve dreamt of waking beside you, Kali,” Kylo admitted, his tone lighter than usual. “I’ve dreamt of you falling upon me, undressing me, kissing me. I’ve dreamt of an eager nymph who begged for me, a woman who could not sleep without me by her side for less than moral reasons. But even that fanciful world has never produced something like this: you leaving me. This isn’t the way I imagined we would end this.”

“Is that your way of asking me to stay? How vulgar...” Kali shot back, smiling shyly beneath his gaze. It seemed familiar, the tenderness of his eyes upon her, though she couldn’t recall a time he’d ever looked at her with such eyes. The memory had never existed regardless of her treatment, she knew, because it didn’t hurt to attempt to conjure. All she knew was that, for once, she didn’t feel as if she was choking on her own spit when his eyes found her form and her blood didn’t freeze the way it always had. This was the end. There was no reason to be afraid now that her life wasn’t built around his.

“No, don’t be so full of yourself,” Kylo murmured, approaching Kali slowly. “Your recovery, tell me about your memories.”

“I know,” she faltered, too aware of his proximity. “I know that I’m a recovering criminal.” “

And a bit of a nymphomaniac,” he interjected, without an ounce of amusement on his tongue.

* * *

 

He would never forget how fragile Kali seemed before he knew her. This little girl made entirely of glass stitched herself to him and he couldn’t bring himself to shake her off for fear of breaking her. But he’d be the first to admit he thought of her as an annoying, clingy parasite and wanted as little to do with her as possible. She smelled of death and the kind of darkness he’d spent so much time avoiding, but there was this lingering flame in her eyes that made him want to preserve it after a while.

Like everything else, wanting her was a phase that built slowly for him until one morning his eyes fell upon her and he thought that he might like to keep her one day. Ah, he wanted to keep her far away from the destruction he was sure to bring (which he had no qualms regarding because he knew as well as any that any final goal could only be met after a certain amount of suffering). And, if she could have her way, she would have run away from him after that day or, perhaps, even later than that when she finally saw him for what he was in his entirety.

Kylo gradually took his place in the Felian household. A night, maybe a week, spent here or there punctuated by long months lacking any kind of correspondence often left the inhabitants wondering what his intentions were and whether or not he’d eventually settle. He never explained why he stayed, claiming instead that all that mattered was the fact that he stayed at all; he could have turned and never looked back. But there was something about living nestled in such luxury that pulled him back for long enough to face one morning that chained him to the Felians. He never understood the relationship between the father and child. Where the girl reached, her father dodged her writhing fingers like they were nothing more than a bundle of snakes or something one would rather avoid having contact with. They kept a certain distance from each other that allowed him just enough space to slip into.

It was Kali who suggested one of the events that made him all too aware of her. Her father was away and she’d waited years already to repay Kylo in the only way she knew how to, as forbidden as it was. A rainy evening trapped the two in the house together. He felt, as the day went on doused in gray, that she was playing with him, playing some elaborate prank that involved her ceaseless presence and gaze. Looking back, he should have known what she wanted to do long before she attempted to... well, repay him. It was a simple enough request, though.

“Watch it with me.”

She was talking about a movie she’d already seen too many times and could quote, though she didn’t find any aspect of the film to be even slightly interesting by that point. More of an order wrapped up in her sweet voice, than a suggestion, Kylo was obligated to suffer through the film he didn’t like any more than she did. When she kissed him, that corner of his mouth that never forgot the smoothness of her lips pressed to it, he turned automatically away from her before he registered what she’d done. He looked at her for what felt like an eternity and he didn’t see that young girl anymore, but a girl maturing into a woman who was beautiful and wanted him (more than he was accustomed to). Even though he yelled and tossed things around, he couldn’t help the smile that haunted his lips when she retreated to her room after he begrudgingly agreed to not tell her father as if there was any other option. And, perhaps, there was one so impure it only crossed his mind for a fleeting moment, but still made him feel unbearably unclean. Simply thinking of it made him shiver with anticipation when he decided he could wait for her to grow older and see if she still felt indebted.

Kylo couldn’t pick out any exact moment when he realized that Kali had seen him as he was, but he was nearly sure it began with her father sitting them down in his office one evening, grim- visaged, but excited, and telling them of all the benefits of marrying each other. The rest came in fragments: the glass shattering slowly with shards skidding across a rippling surface that bled with the lightest touch. It was the idea of being trapped that scared her, the notion of being bound to someone who had rejected her vehemently before, but accepted the proposal without any response.

After the proposal, Kylo began to view Kali in parts, forgetting that they joined together to create a whole that avoided him with a growing passion as his temper became more likely to be provoked by smaller catalyst. Until one day he gazed at her and she wouldn’t meet his eyes, he didn’t realize that he couldn’t take the parts when the whole’s eyes shone with fear for him and loathing, such frozen loathing.

* * *

 

“Ben,” Kali murmured. “Do you know him?”

She’d been roused with the name on her tongue and a memory that sent blinding shocks of pain coursing through her body telling her that it was real, repressed. And then there was a sudden burst of anger that made her want to leap from her bed and destroy anything she could touch, though the anger felt like something not entirely her own, like someone living vicariously through her to communicate their rage.

Kylo paused, but didn’t turn to face Kali, with a page of his book between his fingers ready to be turned. Reminding himself to breathe, he found her gaze and held it in search of her motives because that was a name no one had spoken in years and he hadn’t expected to hear for years, decades, maybe even not ever. He sighed when her gaze remained innocently curious, like she was only asking because she honestly didn’t know their relation and, perhaps, he thought, she didn’t remember Ben. But she’d remembered the name, stored it so deep in her memories that the erasure treatment hadn’t washed it away and replaced it with some random tidbit of propaganda. Slowly (because he feared he would betray himself he moved too quickly or spoke too soon) he shook his head and grunted dismissively. But she was still standing in the doorway, not offering the rest of the library any attention.

“Did my father?” Kali asked. “I just – someone must’ve known him.”

“How would I know? Your father is dead. You should know; you’re the one who cut him open,” Kylo snapped, and he knew how harsh he sounded, but he couldn’t risk her knowing.

“And you’re the one he was most likely to tell these things,” she retorted. There it was: a hint of her former self awakened by her desire to argue, that innate push that had quickly accepted Kylo as an enemy, opponent.

“Do you really want to know what I know about your father, Kali?” Kylo growled, standing. “He fucked his own sister. He fucked your mother because she looked like your sister. He wanted me to fuck you because you remind him of his sister. Your father was a sick bastard, too sick to know Ben, too sick to even want you. When you were younger, he would encourage me to go into your room while you slept and touch you while he watched. The only thing he ever talked about with me was what he wanted me to do with you.”

Kali froze not because of shock, but because her mind quite literally seemed to pause and then rewind. She was recalling moments reduced to portions of blinding light and muffled conversation mixed in with vivid emotions. Such a thing happened at least twice a day, a side effect of the treatment that would plague her until her mind had been fully purged and not even a fragment of her past remained. Which was why she was encouraged to begin a new life: to avoid her past and anything that might remind her of it and send her into a bout of excruciating recollection.

“You know Ben,” Kali choked out, gripping the doorframe to keep from falling. Even as she spoke, she wondered why she cared about something or someone she obviously wasn’t meant to remember.

“I told you I’m three people.”

“What are you...? What do you mean? I don’t remember.”

“The Kylo Ren you know you hate, Kylo Ren who dwells beneath the city, and Ben Solo.”

The silence that followed said enough. He knew without having to look at her or ask that she recognized the surname, knew the portion of its history that would forever morph him in her eyes, and he didn’t care. He couldn’t care. He couldn’t allow himself to be weakened any further. A casual slip of the tongue, he thought, would lead to something sinister that would brew in the mind that loved the Resistance without remembering her part in it.

“Ben Solo, how did you get here?” It was a rhetorical question, little more than a musing spoken aloud.

“The real question is why did I stay?”

“For power.” That was Kali’s voice, but those weren’t her words. Dread made every bone in her body shake and creak as she tried to control herself, but her slip went unnoticed by Kylo who seemed to be silently agreeing with her.

“Coming here was an accident, yes, but staying... I stayed for the promise of greatness. I stayed to best the world and rule it.” _And to have you_ , he wanted to yell, but he would only regret it.

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

Ben Solo or her father? Ah, but it didn’t matter because, in a sense, he’d murdered both.

“Why?” Kali whispered.

And that simple word would haunt his night. He moved as if his body didn’t belong to him, unsure of himself for the first time in so long because of one word. In theory, he knew why he’d killed her father: it was an accident. But what of himself, he had to think, why had he erased himself? The answer wasn’t as simple as achieving the greatness his grandfather had because he was nearly sure he could have done the same had he bound himself to the Republic he wanted to tear down. What was the allure of a society so stiffly put together that there was no room for disorder? Why was he so easily thrust from one side to the other and then placed in the middle to battle his inner conflict and further the agenda of one cause?

He was still asking himself those questions when he entered the stage.

Bodies upon bodies lined the many rows of the theatre, eerily silent and still. Each person stood a small distance from the other, never once brushing an arm or hip despite their suffocating proximity. Shrouded in darkness and awarded anonymity by their masks, they all watched the barbaric scene before them unfold with as little reaction as one watching a rather dull news segment.

The melody of flesh pounding flesh reverberated harshly in the spectators’ ears, a pleasant hum to the senses of the towering man as his fists and feet flew and it still couldn’t drown out the words so very near the keening of dying animal that held his mind between blades for fingers in burning palms. A spectacular scene to demonstrate the raw, virgin human thirst for blood, he only felt the blood on his skin like warm water, milk, and he could not see the pleasure of skin tearing beneath his digits. Beneath his mask, he bared his teeth and growled a low noise filled with aggression.

“You’re weak,” he spat, sneering down at the man sprawled across the floor. “

I’d rather be weak than a monster,” coughed the man.

 _I am, aren’t I, nothing more than a monster_ , Kylo thought, a feral growl tearing from his throat with enough ferocity to bring spit to the corners of his lips beneath his mask.

The loud crunching screech of bone splitting beneath the weight of a heavy foot assaulted the ears of all present, sending shivers down spines and filling the viewers with a sadistic anticipation. His skin, pulled taut and white, stretched wondrously. Beneath it, his spine shattered in a magnificent show hidden to the eye and similar to a white, splintering tree as it snapped beneath the weight. The man's jaw hung open, a horrible keening noise that grated on the nerves spilled from his torn lips, spilling blood to match, before settling into a string of howls and incoherent whimpers. His eyes bulged, as if pleading to be released and free to roll from his face and to the rough floor.

“Once more, Kylo Ren has defeated his opponent. A round of applause.” The man who spoke radiated monotony. His dusty suit hung from his thin form, never tailored to his measurements. His carefully slicked back few remaining strands of gray hair stuck out above his plain mask. The theatre filled with the booming roar of forced praise for the ever infamous Ren as he claimed a rather subdued victory.

Lacking the usual bloodthirsty approach, Kylo hadn’t shone brightly throughout the fight. Shame, it was usually the ones lacking weapons that proved to be the most barbaric, especially for Kylo. Kylo, who once ripped a man’s throat with his bare hands, a man unperturbed by the notion of reaching into a person and holding their heart, feared by many, even distracted he put on a decent show.

Kylo Ren was not himself. His thoughts had long since escaped him and in his head played never ending white noise. Despondence slowed his movements and weighed down his limbs like the weight of the sea pressing in around him as he tried fruitlessly to swim. To be free of emotion and the notion of replaying one insignificant moment in his head as if it was the only important moment of his existence and every tiny detail to it meant something, he hoped. But that one why kept swimming in his head.


	16. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was watching the olympics opening ceremony while writing this and I think it's meh but kinda eh I mean it's happier than I thought it would be when i started this also thanks for reading until the end

Kylo felt utterly hopeless in his infatuation. And, perhaps, a bit shocked – bewildered – in the face of attraction because he’d always considered himself a step above the rest for the fact that he couldn’t be weakened by the will of adoration. It was entirely bizarre; the thrill that ran down his spine the very first time he thought filling her mouth with something other than useless conversation made for the sake of filling the uncomfortable silence (in which painful inquiries hung) might remedy his irritation.

He was silently lamenting a particularly bland conversation regarding the amount of sugar used in tea that he supposed was meant to represent the state of things. But what good would it do either of them to discuss sugar cubes as if they represented themselves and cooling cups of tea as if they were this very house they’d come to know each other in? He certainly didn’t care why Kali only wanted one cube instead of two, claiming there was such a thing as something being too sweet. To spite her, he’d had his tea bitter and as banal as their dragging conversation. That simple action had made her press her lips together and she averted her gaze, though he caught her looking at him with clear curiosity several times while he choked down his drink.

Kali had been searching Kylo’s face for something as unbridled as the rumored gaze of one born of the Republic. And he was surprisingly attractive. Even with his face twisted into a scowl as he paraded childishly out of a room the moment she entered it, he was admittedly handsome in a peculiar way. Or, perhaps, it was a dangerous way. Oh, it didn’t matter because either way their conversation had gotten under her skin and roused some rebel sympathizer part of her mind that she wanted as little to do with as possible. Simply being near Kylo made her yearn for a return to the alleged crimes of her past and that scared her. If it didn’t hurt so much to remember, she would gladly follow her desires.

“Don’t do that,” Kali said, catching Kylo’s wrist.

“Don’t do what?” He turned slowly to meet her eyes which were on her hand.

“Avoid me,” she mumbled.

“You’ve never liked my company,” he pointed out.

“I-,” she began.

“Don’t remember, but that doesn’t change anything.”

Kali raised her eyes to Kylo’s, trying to communicate what she couldn’t bring herself to say with only wide eyes and her fingers loosening on his wrist as if daring him to pull away from her hold. But he wouldn’t, she knew without knowing how she knew, because he’d been waiting for this for too long, like she’d made him a promise of her touch some time ago.  
“Can I call you Ben?”

Kylo tried to keep his face clear, but he couldn’t control his expression in the wave of surprise followed quickly by a seething anger and simmering jealousy. He wondered, frozen, why she was suddenly so interested in Ben instead of Kylo Ren. What was so great about Ben that, after all of these years, he was the one who dragged her attention back to Kylo? Perhaps it was an effect of the erasure treatment, something to do with a virgin mind trying to settle itself maybe, that made Kali want Ben. Or maybe, Kylo thought, just maybe she wanted him, but only the part of him capable of wanting her. Or likely, she didn’t want anything to do with either Ben or Kylo and she was really only interested in anything related to the Resistance. No, it all had to come down to her not wanting to remember anything. He supposed his name brought a wave of pain every time she thought it: a group of memories trying to break the surface of her steel mind.

“Why?” Kylo asked, finally.

“Because… it’s a nice name,” Kali mumbled, her cheeks flushing.

“That’s it?” Kylo inquired, incredulous in the face of a request so innocent. “No, you may not call me by that wretched name.” And then he remembered her hand on his wrist, the corner of his mouth twitching to form the beginning of a smile quickly tugged down into a deep frown. “Would you marry Ben Solo, a rebel?” he asked, and the softness of his own voice surprised him. He didn’t care, honestly, whether or not Kali preferred Ben to Kylo; he only wanted to hear her admit that she wanted some part of him. He’d wanted that for a while.

“I would have married you, Kylo,” she replied, dropping his wrist. It was a fact that there would be no escaping him – in the past at least – and she still felt the remnants of some affection or gratitude she must have felt for the man some time ago. But there was no romance in her words, no love or affection, only facts based upon facts kept real by, well, a fear she knew she had only because of the several journal entries she’d been able to read before the pain of remembering overwhelmed her. She repeated her words, nodding to herself. Would have, not will. Didn’t that sound so free? It was nice to be able to choose.

“Then marry me,” he urged, unable to stop the words from coming.

“No,” she laughed, thinking he was joking, “You don’t even love me.”

“As if people marry for love anymore…” Kylo wanted to slap himself the moment he heard the words on his lips and the implication rang through the air. He was agreeing, he was telling her without saying it explicitly that he didn’t love her and that any marriage would be built on a synthetic foundation, like any other First Order marriage. Only the rebels married for love and he wasn’t one of them, not anymore, and neither was she, but she seemed to like the idea of love.

“You killed my father.”  
  
“I didn’t realize…” The amusement that had lingered between them dissipated quickly with his words. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t pretend to care.”

“It’s not that I care. I just… there’s no reason to marry you now that he’s…” Kali trailed off, bit her lip. “He’s dead; we don’t have to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“You don’t-”

“I know what I said!”

“Say what you mean,” Kali hissed, glaring at Kylo.

“I want to be with you. Ever since I was told I could be, I wanted to be. It’s not fair that after everything you get to turn around and leave and start a life without me. Don’t you get it? I was supposed to keep you here, I was supposed to be the one who left you and now you’re going to leave me and you… You’re so quick to run away from me.” Kylo’s body burned as he returned Kali’s gaze gone soft with his words, like they actually meant something to her singed mind.

“I don’t…” She had to pause to keep her voice from shaking. “I don’t know you anymore, not like I did. This is scary for me, okay? I don’t remember things about myself that seem so small, but are so important. What was my favorite color, song, or book? I’m alone now, Kylo. There’s no one left. My father’s dead, I don’t remember my mother anymore… And I have you, but thinking about you hurts so I can’t be close to you.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, wiping away tears before they could fall from bloodshot eyes. “It hurts to remember. I don’t know why I ran away from you before, but now it just hurts too much to remember.”

There wasn’t a clear order of things because what they did wasn’t expected. Kylo didn’t realize he was trying to rid Kali of her clothes until her dress was beneath his fingers, the thin fabric yielding easily to his touch. Kali didn’t realize she was doing the same until her eyes fell to her fingers fumbling with his belt, tugging at his shirt. And they hadn’t even kissed or met each other’s gazes. But neither said a word or sought out the other’s lips or eyes, preoccupied by the act of undressing each other without any eroticism, but an overwhelming desperation that made their movements clumsy until they’d both fallen to their knees before each other in their haste.

“We-,” Kali sighed.

“Yes,” Kylo murmured, leaning forward to silence her with a kiss.

He didn’t want to think, only wanted to feel her lips cover his to make the rest of his mouth remember her like that corner had. And he needed to run his hands along every inch of her available to him, to know her like this without having traded something. There was something so amazing about the way he could feel her skin warm beneath his palm, something sublime about  
  
wanting someone and being wanted, too. He froze with the thought, his fingers pausing on her hips where they’d grown comfortable, and became so emotional that the edges of his vision blurred and would not clear until Kali silently kissed his twitching eyelids. Kylo opened his eyes immediately, not wanting to miss a moment of what was to come as her dress fell away from her body.

Fingers guided by need familiarized themselves with Kylo’s body, running along his chest to learn every dip and curve, skipping over his clavicle to trace his neck then the curve of his jaw as their lips met and parted, inviting each other to feast upon each other’s mouths, bodies. She settled for kissing the corner of Kylo’s mouth when he turned his head to catch his breath, his burning lips glistening. She pulled away laughing nervously when she jolted against the growing bulge in his pants, distancing their bodies as her cheeks burned with an innocent embarrassment. She wondered if she’d ever felt so nervous before (since Kylo had called her a nymphomaniac).

“I can feel you,” Kali whispered, her voice swallowed by a sweet breathiness.

“My erection,” Kylo murmured, grabbing her hips as he ground their sexes together through their underwear.

Kali rested her forehead against his neck as he guided her hand between their bodies, leading it along his aching length with a long, low moan that made her cheeks flush red anew. Firm was the first word to filter through her thoughts the moment her fingers wrapped around his shaft above thin fabric, and then she found herself in awe at the sheer heat it radiated even through the fabric. And she could remember doing similar things with other people without thinking of it, never considering the emotional aspect of such intimacy. What made simply touching him feel like jumping over a cliff and knowing that she would soar? What made this feel slightly more intense? Was it the tears kissed away or the weeks (possibly years) of building tension that made his skin seem so hot?

A single tug left Kylo bare and unrestricted. He raised a hand to hold Kali’s head where it was where she couldn’t glance up at his face as her fingers returned to his length curving unabashedly into the air, standing red and proud with a head shining with the arousal she allowed her thumb to swirl around. When she traced a timid line from the head of his cock to its base, he grabbed her wrist to pause her movements and simply enjoy the moment. Melting into her kiss, he wrapped his arms around her, not missing the way she shifted her hips against him, and there was something exquisite about the way their skin met and stuck together with a light sheen of perspiration already beginning to gather on their writhing bodies. He tore the fabric of her underwear, pushing the cloth up to hold it tightly in his fist.

Kali flashed a shy smile as Kylo coaxed her to her back, running his hands briefly down her sides before he grasped her thighs and hoisted them around his waist to settle between them. She turned her head when he went still to imbibe her form with the softest eyes he’d ever spared for her, her hands shifting to cover her sex. Too aware of the shock emanating from between her  
  
thighs, she gasped when her palm brushed her clit as Kylo pushed her hands aside only to spread those sacred lips apart and admire a sight his dreams hadn’t done justice. Kali wondered what she must look like to him; all spread out with her thighs draped over his and her back arching as she reached for any part of him her fingers could reach, and she could feel her own excitement slip from her entrance bared to his hungry eyes with pupils so dilated they threatened to claim his eyes.

Kylo’s chest heaved as Kali ran her fingers over his stomach, prompting the muscles beneath to clench. He leaned forward to press a chaste kiss to her lips as he slid into her. Warm and pulsing around him, he sucked in a breath through bared teeth and gave her no time to adjust to his cock before burying it fully in her cunt that seemed to cry out to be filled by him. His thumb circled her clit, claiming the sensitive nub as his to pleasure.

Kali moaned against Kylo’s parted lips. She started to protest weakly (though she didn’t know why) when he offered that first tentative stroke to her clit having filled her completely. A weak mewl left her lips and she shook her head, feeling as if he was burning her in the most pleasant way possible. The flames licked beneath her skin like the kisses of thousands of coveted lovers wherever his hand fell and she closed her eyes to breathe, to feel every breath like she hadn’t before. The noise of it all was so lewd: his moans mingling with hers, the noise of his cock thrusting into her wetness that welcomed him like the most saccharine embrace, and the faltering beat of his skin clapping against hers as their hips moved desperately as if fighting a yielding current. She dragged her nails across the broad expanse of his back, pulling him against her so that his thrusts became awkward and he drove his hips into hers slowly, but harshly.

And in the midst of it all, they were both taken by a feeling of completeness as they filled each other’s emptiness. He wiped away her loneliness with all-consuming kisses. Her embrace warded off the madness of his life, the sadness that haunted his bones, and the fear that had plagued him for years. They were alright in those moments, these sweaty bodies moving wildly toward their mind numbing climaxes, together and as close as they’d ever be. They only thought of each other and how amazing the other was with a body seemingly carved to please each other.

Kali murmured a string of incoherent praises and whines, her eyes rolling as the tightness of her body neared the point of snapping. Like a rope stretched nearly to the point of breaking, all she needed was one metaphorical tug to come apart beneath Kylo. Her back arched up off the floor and Kylo slipped and arm beneath her, pulling her up as he leaned back and rested his weight on one arm, silently urging her to ride his cock (she felt it twitch as he gazed at her, his mouth hanging agape). She held his shoulders and lifted her hips once, letting them crash down upon his. And then she felt his fingers on her clit again, slick, and it took all of her energy to cling to him so tightly she feared she might choke him. Her erect nipples brushed against his burning skin with every movement and she relished the sensation of him enveloping her while her cunt swallowed his cock.

Kylo groaned and stilled as her orgasm claimed control of her body, feeling it push him over the edge. He felt her walls clench around his length, heard her cries muffled by his lips when he  
  
kissed her again, his hips jerking uncontrollably with the wave of burning pleasure that swept over their bodies. His vision slipped out of focus, but he opened his eyes to meet her gaze, to see her face twisted with euphoria as she shook in his arms gasping and clutching him tightly. When it was all over, he held her close and closed his eyes, unwilling to let the moment end even when his cock slipped out of her with a string of his semen mixing with her own arousal leaking from her still twitching slit.

“We’ve never done that,” Kali panted, smiling sheepishly, content to lie atop Kylo.

“How do you know?”

“Because I would have married you already,” she replied, chuckling.

“I love you,” Kylo whispered.

“What?” Kylo started to repeat himself, but Kali cut him off, “Since when?”

“I don’t know.”

* * *

 

Even after she left, Kylo found flimsy reasons to visit Kali, showing up on campus randomly or at her door with thin excuses. And each time they’d fall upon each other after bickering about something small. When he was feeling affectionate, he would spend the night and watch her get ready in the morning. When he wasn’t, he left with a quick goodbye and a vague promise to possibly return. Either way, he always noticed with a sinking heart, Kali never showed any sign that she cared and never came to him even when he knew she must have grown anxious in his absence.

Sometimes, they drank until their heads felt both too light and heavy, and stared at each other with an underlying disdain that had remained over time because they were constantly irritating each other. They’d decided without saying it that they’d never get married. As long as they returned to each other, legal files forcing them to reunite seemed too constricting for either and, perhaps, Kylo knew Kali would never agree to it. She practically repelled every attempt at romance.

If Kylo invited Kali to dinner, she was late. If he called her to hear her voice, she wouldn’t speak, claiming to be embarrassed (which she always was because she’d never had someone only want to hear her speak) until he hung up on her. If he stayed too long, she grew impatient with him and started tiny spats that grew into arguments so loud her neighbors complained. But Kylo was a bit too twisted for her to want to consider any romance with him anyway; he’d once promised to join the Republic just to kill her legally after she told him she was interested in someone else.

At the exact moment, they were drunk, musing, and not too hostile to speak casually about nonsense. Kylo had mentioned the possibility of children in their future which had sparked a fairly  
  
interesting conversation about Kali as a mother and himself, in turn, as a father and then, with the slightest hint of sentimentality, what their children might be like.

“They won’t like me,” Kylo was murmuring, trying to decide if he could get away with leaving his shoes on for a round of table sex.

“You’re probably right,” Kali responded, laughing.

“You’re supposed to comfort me.”

“They won’t like me either; I don’t know how to raise little people.”

“I like you,” Kylo said.

“I love you.”

Kali’s eyes widened and she covered her mouth, shaking her head, but Kylo had already reacted and was asking her to say it again (ordering her to in his drunken stupor as he tripped over his own feet to pull her out of her seat). She laughed when he kneeled, pushing her thighs apart and guiding her to the edge of her seat, knowing that he wouldn’t remember falling to his knees before her and telling her to say “it” again. In the morning, he would grumble about his hangover and then he’d disappear to live his life without her for a bit. And he would be Kylo Ren again. She liked him drunk because he wasn’t quite himself after a bitter bottle.

“You know, I could be arrested for visiting you,” Kylo groaned.

It was more or less true. Kali lived in a neutral zone which was fine for a no name such as herself, but scandalous for a prominent First Order figure like Kylo Ren.

“I love you,” Kali said, quietly.

“It would be worth it.”


End file.
